Southern Poverty Law Center, by it's own definition, a 'hate group'‏

That the Southern Poverty Law Center is a complete joke and has been for years is old news. Equally unastounding these days is the assertion that the organization is, by their own definition, a hate group that engages in hate speech. For the most recent example of how completely worthless their 'hate group' designation is, one need look no further than Dr Michael Brown's article from yesterday that lays bare that which Ryan Lenz and Evelyn Schaltter of the SPLC apparently cannot stand, the FACTS. While reporting on a conference that Dr Brown spoke at, the number of errors in the article criticizing the conference is so extremely high as to speed right past yellow journalism and enter directly into Intentionally Misleading Territory...

"Moving on, here are some of the most egregious errors in the report. Describing the NARTH conference itself, the article states that, “True to form, the people speaking at that conference were not therapists promising revelations about human sexuality, but rather prominent culture warriors of the religious right, like Brown [and Sharon Slater].”

This is unmitigated nonsense. As noted by my NARTH source (and as I witnessed firsthand), Slater and I were “the only two speakers who were not clinical, research, and academic experts, not to mention the keynote presentation of Dr. Nicholas Cummings, the former President of the American Psychological Association.” Broken down by the hour, “Clinical/Research/Academic presentations = 29.25 hours (21 speakers), Policy presentations = 2.75 hours (2 speakers).”

All Lenz had to do was look at the conference program to get the facts right, but who cares about facts when you’re writing biased articles designed to advance a particular agenda? Why let truth stand in the way when your goal is to discredit people by claiming they belong to the “radical right,” along with skinheads and neo-Nazis and the like?

The article claims that, according to NARTH, “homosexuality is an unnatural deviation from normal sexual development, a form of mental disorder.” Actually, my source notes that “NARTH does not use that term [a form of mental disorder] to label homosexuality.” The best the SPLC could do was cite a 15 year-old quote from a NARTH co-founder, the late Dr. Charles Socarides, but this was simply his personal opinion and is not part of NARTH’s official statements or standards.

The article quotes (and attacks) Dr. Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute without mentioning that he has nothing to do with NARTH. But why quibble?

The article then approvingly cites gay activist Wayne Besen who claims that, “There’s no other play in the playbook except going back to the fire and brimstone.” Is he kidding? A professional counselor helping a client deal with unwanted same-sex attraction equals “fire and brimstone”? And this is part of an “intelligence report”? (I know. The term is sounding more oxymoronic by the second.)" 

 So once again we see that those out there who are the quickest to play the bigot card and love to accuse others are often themselves the biggest bigots on the entire planet. The SPLC intentionally misidentifies National Socialist groups as being 'right-wing' when their ideology has nothing to do with small, limited government conservatism as espoused by Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh et al.  Meanwhile blatantly racist organizations such as La Raza and MEChA openly peddle their extreme vitriol and they can expect the SPLC won't say a peep about them (And in the case of La Raza, actually defend them).

The Wayne Besen reference was particularly amusing and the icing on the cake for this parody of a thinktank as this charlatan has been clearly shown to be an intellectual coward as well as a confirmed liar.

All that matters is that the accusation is made people. Facts apparently matter not.

EDIT: I knew that if I did a little digging, I could cite an example of how the SPLC practices apologetics for the thoroughly racist organization MEChA and of course,they do.