Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has gotten its right-wing talking points: Blame the Souther Poverty Law Center for the shooting at the Family Research Council, even though there's not a shred of evidence to link the two.
Elizabeth Harrington gives it a go in an Aug. 16 article:
The man who shot a security guard at the Family Research Council (FRC) on Wednesday was “given a license” to do so because of groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that have labeled the FRC a “hate group,” said FRC President Tony Perkins.
The SPLC has posted what it calls a "Hate Map" on its website that points to the FRC as a "hate" group located in Washington, D.C..
Harrington offers no evidence that the alleged shooter ever saw this map -- which lists only the city, not the street address.
By contrast, the FRC's website not only provides the street address of its headquarters, a video on the website features an image of the building its headquarters is in.
If the FRC's own website provides more information about how to find its offices than the SPLC's map does, shouldn't Harrington be blaming the FRC for making it so easy for the shooter to find it?
Harrington also complains:
The map and SPLC listing of "hate organizations" equates groups such as the Family Research Council, which promotes the traditional Christian view of marriage and sexuality, with racist groups that violate Christian teaching on human dignity.
In fact, the SPLC has explained that mere opposition to gay marriage is not why it named the FRC as a hate group:
The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.
As the SPLC made clear at the time and in hundreds of subsequent statements and press interviews, we criticize the FRC for claiming, in Perkins’ words, that pedophilia is “a homosexual problem” — an utter falsehood, as every relevant scientific authority has stated. An FRC official has said he wanted to “export homosexuals from the United States.” The same official advocated the criminalizing of homosexuality.
Harrington did not report the SPLC's statements, nor its statement it "eplores all violence, and our thoughts are with the wounded victim, Leo Johnson, his family and others who lived through the attack."
