Like many other lies spread by zealots on the right in today’s GOP they just have to repeat it often to make it seem factual to the indoctrinated rank and file followers of the diminishing Republican Party. The GOP truly has become the party of marks, rubes, and suckers.

They just can’t stop lying. They claim to represent Christianity and the celestial love for mankind that Christ embodied, but when it comes to whomever they regard as their enemies here on planet Earth, the crudest of libels will do.

The latest example of the religious right’s endless series of falsifications, slanders and baseless demonizations came last Friday from Janet Porter, the former Janet Folger who heads the Faith2Action website, is an Obama-bashing “birther,” and really, really dislikes gay people. On a YouTube video, Porter claimed that the Southern Poverty Law Center had named the Concerned Women for America a hate group, published its president’s address, and “invited” people to “visit” her.

“Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America is concerned,” Porter says in a voice that telegraphs worry on her latest propaganda video. “The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled CWA as a hate group and they published her personal information and address and invited people to ‘visit’ her.”

A small problem for the big-mouthed spinner of tall tales: The SPLC has never listed the CWA as a hate group. The SPLC never published any personal information or address for Nance. And the SPLC never suggested that anyone visit her. Even Nance knows that. In the fundraising E-mail that was Porter’s source, Nance says another “liberal organization” labeled CWA a hate group, though she never says which one and only the SPLC publishes such a group list. And she attributed the publication of her address and the invitation to visit her merely to “the anti-CWA crusade.”

Porter’s bald-faced lie is one of a barrage aimed at SPLC that has come from the religious right in recent days and weeks. This morning, Rick Manning, the vice president of Americans for Limited Government, published his own scurrilous bit of yellow journalism on his group’s NetRightDaily website under the racy headline, “Southern Poverty Law Center tied to domestic terrorism.”

The centerpiece of Manning’s attack is a video published by the Family Research Council (FRC) last week that shows a man who wounded a security guard at its headquarters telling investigators that he got the FRC’s name from the SPLC list of hate groups as it appears on our website. That is apparently true, although it is false, as some on the religious right have claimed, that the shooter, Floyd Lee Corkins, found the street address of FRC on our website before carrying out the Aug. 15, 2012, attack. In fact, we never publish addresses of the groups we criticize.

But that was enough for Manning, who wrote that the SPLC is “now directly tied to a terrorist act” and has been “certified in federal court as being directly responsible for an act of domestic terrorism.” Certified? Directly responsible? Well, not really. But for people like Manning, any wild-eyed claim is apparently acceptable.

More: Religious Right Hurls False Accusations at SPLC

The real test to see if he’s a real or faux Libertarian is to ask him questions about abortion. Then his paleo streak might come out.

U.S. Congressman Justin Amash, a Tea Party Republican from Michigan, tweeted this week that government is the “real threat” to traditional marriage, “not gay couples who love each other & want to spend lives together.” Amash is in his second term in Congress, and a recent National Journal article labeled him “The Senate Trouble-Maker in Waiting.”

To be clear, Amash is not supporting same-sex marriage, rather, he opposes DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 that bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, because he’s a libertarian and a states’ rights and “religious freedom”advocate.

Amash retained his seat in November after a challenge from Trevor Thomas, the former communications director of SLDN, the LGBT service members legal defense group.

How conservative is Amash?

He’s received a 38% from the ACLU, a 66% rating from the anti-gay hate group Family Research Council, an ‘A’ from the NRA, a 92% from the CPAC folks, a 100% from the Koch Brothers Club for Growth and the freakish extremists at the John Birch society.

So, pretty conservative, but not Jim Inhofe conservative.

More: Tea Party Congressman, Senate Hopeful Tweets Support for Repeal of DOMA

Days after Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) publicly reversed his stance on same-sex marriage, conservative pundits and activists have singled out the politician’s gay son for his sexual identity.

On the same day Portman’s change of heart made national headlines, the right wing blog “Government Is Not God” warned the politician that homosexuality “may eventually kill his son from AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, or oral cancer.”

“Homosexual sex is ultimately just as destructive as cocaine use,” the post continued. “Would Portman suddenly call for the legalization of cocaine if his son had announced that he was a cocaine addict? Would that be “loving” and “compassionate”?”

In a statement posted on the Family Research Council (FRC) website, FRC president Tony Perkins wrote that Will’s choices, and the choices of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in general “are both harmful to them and society as a whole.”

Meanwhile, Bryan Fischer, the controversial mouthpiece of the anti-gay American Family Association, compared being gay to being a bank robber, adding “prayers for the senator, his wife, his son and their entire family are called for at this time.”

More

Terrorism is terrorism; excusing it or sympathizing with it does not make sense in a modern democratic society based on laws and reason. It is, was, and will always be flatly evil and plain wrong to bypass political process to achieve your ends through murder, assassination, intimidation, kidnapping, and torture of civilian groups or individuals. No justification for terror passes muster regardless of motive or cause.

Sympathizing with terror is also wrong, and making the victims somehow the perpetrators (as this alternet article does,) never flies. In this country we are free to hate, and in this country Floyd Corkins is a terrorist and he deserves the full weight of justice to fall upon him, just as every other terrorist does.

That doesn’t somehow turn the bigots at the Family Research Council into fleecy little lambs — their hate and bigotry makes them sympathizers, panderers, and enablers of a terror campaign of Gay Hate and Gay bashing that’s quietly gone on against the LGBT members of our communities for more than a century in this country.

You get to hate in this country - your speech is protected, but people do get to point out who the haters are. It’s a great system in that haters, bigots, and their favorite demagogues don’t have to hide in corners or talk in codes, they are easy for everyone to see and criticize.

It didn’t take the SPLC branding FRC and Tony Perkins a hate group for the majority of the populace to see the facts. Tony Perkins is a spotlight hog and publicity hound every bit as much as the Hate Church Westboro Baptist clan is. His message is only slightly more polished but really no different than theirs, and he has willfully usurped their spot as the number one gay hate group in the media. Trying to blame the SPLC for Corkins is futile with the general public, but bigots like Tony Perkins and Neoconfederate demagogue Robert Stacey McCain have to give it a try for their homophobic fans.

After years of thinking it over, Floyd Corkins finally had a plan.

He’d bought a gun and learned how to use it. He’d loaded three magazines. And he had stopped by Chick-fil-A to pick up 15 sandwiches, which he planned to smear in the dying faces of staffers he expected to kill at the Family Research Council in Washington.

It would be a statement, he said, “against the people who work in that building,” according to documents filed in U.S. District Court, where Corkins pleaded guilty on Wednesday to three charges related to the August shooting at the conservative policy group.

Corkins told Judge Richard Roberts that he hoped to intimidate gay rights opponents.

The shooting came amid intense debate over remarks against gay marriage by an executive with the Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A restaurant chain and the company’s support for groups considered hostile to gay rights.

The research council, a Christian group that focuses on family, anti-abortion and religious liberty issues and views homosexuality as harmful, backed Chick-fil-A in the ensuing controversy.

“They endorse Chick-fil-A and also Chick-fil-A came out against gay marriage, so I was going to use that as a statement,” prosecutors quoted Corkins as telling investigators.

More: DC Shooter Wanted to Kill as Many as Possible, Prosecutors Say

Most of the challenges to Gay marriage amount to attempts to show some form of harm from it, and they fail. The ones outlined in this article rest on unproven assumptions or hypothetical future grievances, that could be litigated in future cases if or when they came up, which is how our body of law grows, and how we reach a happy ground that works for most if not everyone over time.

For that reason, the arguments raised by opponents in last week’s briefs could be critical. They break down into several categories:

Procreation and child-rearing: Groups defending Proposition 8, led by California’s ProtectMarriage.com, argue that marriage is intended largely for having children and raising them with a mother and father.

“Recognition of same-sex marriages would not promote either of the principal interests on the basis of which opposite-sex marriage is a protected institution,” says a brief submitted by the conservative Family Research Council.

Several briefs criticize the District Court’s original ruling for its emphasis on marriage as a commitment among adults. The Catholic bishops labeled that definition “incoherent” and “wildly over-inclusive.”

Special legal protections: Opponents will have a tough time winning if the justices decide that laws based on sexual orientation deserve heightened scrutiny, as have those dealing with race.

Although the high court declared bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional in its 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, opponents of same-sex marriage such as the Coalition of African American Pastors say that doesn’t set a precedent.

Others argue that gays’ sexual orientation is a choice, rather than genetically immutable. One brief tells the stories of four “ex-gays” now in heterosexual relationships.

More: As Supreme Court Takes Up Gay Marriage Question, Foes Rally

There were two “anti abortion” “anti Gun Control” rallies yesterday in Missouri. The religious right cares if you are a fetus, but doesn’t care if you are a parent burying your bullet riddled 7 year old.

Religious-right extremists who have spent most of their energy in recent years vilifying LGBT people or fighting the nation’s culture wars on other fronts have found a new demon to slay: gun control.

It might seem odd that those who profess allegiance to the teachings of Jesus Christ would be so vociferous about making sure that Americans have continued, unfettered access to assault rifles. But in the wake of the massacre of schoolchildren in Connecticut, which ignited the most heated debate about gun control in this country in a decade, some of the religious right’s most rabid voices are joining the fight.

Matt Barber, a lawyer for the anti-gay Liberty Counsel, predicts a civil war over gun control. Bryan Fischer, the rabid mouthpiece for the homophobic American Family Association, has banned the use of the words “assault rifles” on his radio show. Even the Family Research Council, which describes itself as a pro-family organization, has targeted President Obama as “blatantly disingenuous when he says he believes in the Second Amendment.”

David Barton, the Christian-right pseudo-historian whose views on America’s founding have been widely debunked by mainstream historians, went on conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck’s Internet television show this week to claim the National Rifle Association (NRA) was formed to protect freed slaves from the Ku Klux Klan.

More: Religious-Right Radicals Join NRA Side in Gun Battle

splcenter.org

For the social conservatives who gathered in Washington, D.C., today for this year’s Values Voter Summit, the first day’s speeches must have been a bit disappointing. There was hardly a peep about the LGBT people who are so often the target of vicious rhetoric and false propaganda used by the summit’s host, the Family Research Council, and some of its co-sponsoring groups.

In fact, the star attraction, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, stuck mostly to foreign policy and the economy - as did House Majority leader Eric Cantor.

That clearly frustrated American Family Association’s (AFA) Bryan Fischer, an unrelenting gay-basher who has blamed gay men for orchestrating the Holocaust and claimed that the HIV virus doesn’t cause AIDS.

“The biggest mistake is they put a bag over Paul Ryan’s head,” he told Talking Points Memo. Fischer added that he was “deeply disturbed” that the congressman from Wisconsin did not even mention his campaign’s opposition to gay marriage. “I got to believe that there was some kind of directive from the top of the campaign: We don’t want you to deal with this issue.”

There may be some truth to what Fischer says - though that would be a rarity.

In his speech, Tim Wildmon, Fischer’s boss at the AFA, told the crowd he “had to stick to his script” and “stay on message.” As a result he read from prepared remarks that mostly involved discussions of historical figures.

It seems everyone wanted to be on their best behavior.

Even Muslim-bashing appeared to be off-limits, perhaps because of the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya and the spreading anti-American violence triggered by an anti-Islam propaganda film made in the U.S. that denigrates the Prophet Muhammad in particularly offensive ways.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann couldn’t help herself, though. She warned of looming speech codes enforced by Muslims and of a 10-year plan led by an international Islamic institute to install Shariah law in America

Ahead of his group’s annual Values Voter Summit, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins — one the most prominent public supporters of Todd Akin — said he’s in regular contact with Mitt Romney and his presidential campaign, and lauded Romney’s new focus on what he called ‘issues of faith.’

‘He’s starting to feel more confident about those issues,’ Perkins said of Romney during a bloggers briefing Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation. ‘There’s been a hesitancy because there are theological differences between us evangelicals and the Mormon faith. And you can’t blur that line. And in my discussion with him, I said you can’t blur that line.’

Perkins said he talked with Team Romney about how best to leverage Democrats’ chaotic floor vote in Charlotte that added ‘God’ to the platform, and support for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reportedly at the urging of President Obama.

TalkingPointsMemo.com

splcenter.org

I agree with Mark Potok, the FRC clearly is a hate group - there’s little difference between their hate diatribes against gays and muslims and those of Terry Jones or Fred Phelps. They cannot use the bible to shield them from justifiable criticism for the bile, fear, and libelous hate they propagate.

Editor’s Note: The ongoing religious right attack on the SPLC, originally framed last month to suggest that the SPLC bore responsibility for a shooting at the Family Research Council because it had earlier named the FRC a “hate group,” has continued to expand to the point of absurdity. That was shown again last Friday, when Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel said on a radio show that any media that cited the SPLC’s hate group listings “will also have blood on its hands.” What follows is a response to the original criticism launched by the FRC.

Do words have consequences?

For years, we at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have argued that they do. When conspiracy-minded Islamophobes claim that Muslims have a secret plan to force America into a medieval-style caliphate, Muslims in the streets get hurt. When angry nativists assert that Mexicans are plotting to “reconquer” the Southwest, some Americans respond by attacking Latinos.

And when the religious right spreads false and defamatory propaganda like the completely baseless notion that gay men molest children at rates far higher than their heterosexual counterparts, LGBT people end up, much more frequently than most people realize, at the wrong end of a baseball bat.

For the last three weeks, the SPLC has been under attack by a number of groups that fit into that last category. After an apparently politically motivated man wounded a guard at the Family Resource Council (FRC) in Washington, these groups launched a coordinated assault on the SPLC, accusing it of responsibility in the attack because it had earlier named the FRC a “hate group.”

At a well-attended press conference the day after the Aug. 15 shooting, FRC President Tony Perkins said that the alleged attacker, Floyd Corkins, “was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center.” He added, “I believe the Southern Poverty Law should be held accountable for their reckless use of terminology.”

A day later, Islam-basher and Obama-hater Jerry Boykin, Perkin’s recently hired deputy at FRC, took his boss’ rhetoric a few steps further. The SPLC, Boykin said, is an “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, Marxist organization” staffed by “an evil group of people” who are “dangerous.”

The idea seemed to be that the SPLC was hypocritical — that after years of suggesting that organizations that demonize minority groups are ultimately contributing to violence against those groups, the SPLC had been caught doing exactly what it criticized in others. We had “recklessly” labeled the FRC as a hate group merely, as Perkins told Fox News, “because we defend the family and stand for traditional, orthodox Christianity.”

Did Perkins have a point? Was the SPLC’s criticism morally or functionally equivalent to the conduct we criticized, admittedly in harsh terms, coming from the FRC and like groups?

glaad.org

GLAAD today joined calls from leading lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocates in urging media to report critically on responses from anti-LGBT organizations including the Family Research Council (FRC) and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) following a shooting at FRC headquarters last week.

Last Wednesday, an armed man walked into the headquarters of FRC in Washington D.C., shot security guard Leonardo Johnson in the arm, and Johnson’s quick thinking and heroism may have saved countless lives.  In the days since the attack, FRC and other anti-gay organizations and individuals have placed the blame for the shooting on research organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), for having designated FRC a “hate group.”

In the past, when the targets of similar incidents have been those on the political or social left, conservative groups have been quick to place blame on the individual responsible. This time, anti-gay organizations have flipped the script and are exploiting Mr. Johnson’s heroism for political (and in the case of the National Organization for Marriage, monetary) gain. FRC, NOM and others have repeatedly stated that the ‘hate group’ designation is what gave the shooter, in FRC President Tony Perkins’ words, a “license to kill.”

However, the Southern Poverty Law Center cites twenty four paragraphs of actions that the FRC has taken, all of which explain exactly what Perkins and his organization did to earn such a designation.   

The LGBT community says there’s a simple solution to FRC’s stated dilemma. Don’t want to be called out for being vehemently anti-LGBT? Do better.