The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a landmark report today adding new official Hate Groups to its well-respected list. The report concludes that the overall climate is getting better for LGBT people, which is leading some anti-gay organizations to get even more extreme.
Such extremism has taken its toll.
SPLC analyzed hate crime statistics and compared the rate of victimization for homosexuals to that of the other groups:
The figures show that homosexuals are 2.4 times more likely to suffer a violent hate crime attack than Jews (8.3 divided by 3.5). In the same way, gays are 2.6 times more likely to be attacked than blacks; 4.4 times more likely than Muslims; 13.8 times more likely than Latinos; and 41.5 times more likely than whites, according to the FBI figures. The basic pattern holds by years as well as across the years.
The bottom line: Homosexuals are far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crime.
One new organization certified as an official hate group is the Family Research Council. A key reason for the listing is FRC’s Peter Sprigg, who is also on the board of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays. PFOX just weaseled its way in as a charity at the World Bank. Here is what SPLC had to say about PFOX’s go-to guy:
Headed today by former Louisiana State Rep. Tony Perkins, the FRC has been a font of anti-gay propaganda throughout its history. It relies on the work of Robert Knight, who also worked at Concerned Women for America but now is at Coral Ridge Ministries (see above for both), along with that of FRC senior research fellows Tim Dailey (hired in 1999) and Peter Sprigg (2001). Both Dailey and Sprigg have pushed false accusations linking gay men to pedophilia (see related story, p. 31): Sprigg has written that most men who engage in same-sex child molestation “identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual,” and Dailey and Sprigg devoted an entire chapter of their 2004 book Getting It Straight to similar material. The men claimed that “homosexuals are overrepresented in child sex offenses” and similarly asserted that “homosexuals are attracted in inordinate numbers to boys.”
More recently, in March 2008, Sprigg, responding to a question about uniting gay partners during the immigration process, said: “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.” He later apologized, but then went on, last February, to tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.” “So we should outlaw gay behavior?” Matthews asked. “Yes,” Sprigg replied. At around the same time, Sprigg claimed that allowing gay people to serve openly in the military would lead to an increase in gay-on-straight sexual assaults.
When the World Bank learned about PFOX’s radical program, it made a step in the right direction by ensuring it would not receive tax-payer money through World Bank matching funds in 2011. However, to punish PFOX, the World Bank had to undermine 24 legitimate organizations that will also not be eligible for matching funds.
Given this new information on Sprigg and his ties to PFOX, the World Bank should move expeditiously to reinstate the legitimate organizations and drop PFOX as a charity. Unless, that is, the World Bank is comfortable associating itself with extremists who seek to discriminate against, blatantly lie about, deport and imprison LGBT people.
The World Bank should act now before it diminishes its reputation as a tolerant organization that respects diversity. This is particularly important because associating with radical hate-mongers will also damage the World Banks global efforts to combat HIV/AIDS.
This is not the first time that PFOX has been tied to hate groups.
In August, two key members of PFOX spoke at the “Truth Academy”. The conference was hosted by Americans For Truth About Homosexuality’s founder Peter LaBarbera, whose organization was also listed today as an official hate site by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
At the Truth Academy, PFOX Board President Greg Quinlan raised eyebrows with an offensive speech. Quinlan explained how he allegedly went from gay-to-straight, and found support from an Assemblies of God Church that accepted him because he allegedly was not effeminate.
“I wasn’t your flaming faggot, you know,” Quinlan told the chuckling crowd. “I can say that because I’ve been there and done that. You know, the one’s whose wrists are so limp that when the wind blows they slap themselves in the face. I wasn’t one of them.”
At the same conference, Arthur Abba Goldberg, the convicted Wall Street thief who runs PFOX’s speakers bureau, demonstrated PFOX’s unscientific use of stereotypes.
“By the way, did you notice that a lot of gays who remain in the gay lifestyle also do a lot of body building,” said Abba Goldberg. “They will be in the gym a lot trying to build up their pecs…Because they have these body image issues and don’t feel they are masculine enough.”
Again, we ask the World Bank: Do you really want to be linked to destructive people such as Abba Goldberg, Sprigg, LaBarbera and Quinlan?
