Will Cut Ties
Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivers remarks on efforts to combat violent crime in America during an appearance at the United States Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia on Thursday August 9, 2018, in Macon, Ga. (AP Photo/John Amis)AP Photo/John Amis
9 Aug 20183814
Attorney General Jeff Sessions criticized the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) by name Wednesday as he spoke at the Religious Liberty Summit of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the successful Christian public interest law firm the SPLC designates a “hate group.”
The ADF earned its SPLC “Anti-LGBT Hate Group” designation after a string of Supreme Court victories that enraged the far left, most notably the successful defense of a Christian Colorado baker who refused to adorn a cake with phrases condoning homosexual marriage in this year’s Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
His address to the ADF summit included Sessions first public mention of the SPLC since Fox News’s Tucker Carlson revealed the group’s ongoing, but ill-defined, relationship with the FBI last month. Just days after that report, on July 30, the attorney general seemed to make oblique reference to the SPLC as he announced his new DOJ Religious Liberty Task Force. “We have gotten to the point where … one group can actively target religious groups by labeling them a “hate group” on the basis of their sincerely held religious beliefs,” Sessions said.
On Wednesday, Sessions was much more explicit, praising the SPLC for its past work to combat racism in the South while condemning it for abandoning that legacy to attack right-leaning groups with which it disagrees. In his prepared remarks, Sessions said:
Yet people of faith are facing a new hostility. Really, a bigoted ideology which is founded on animus towards people of faith.
You’ll notice that they don’t rely on the facts. They don’t make better arguments. They don’t propose higher ideals.
No, they just call people names—like “hate group.”
Does that sound familiar?
You know I’m from Alabama—the home of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that did important work in the South, vital work at a pivotal time. As you know well, the law is only words on paper until there are people brave enough to stand up for their rights.
There were hate groups in the South I grew up in. They attacked the life, liberty, and the very worth of minority citizens. You may not know this, but I helped prosecute and secure the death penalty for a klansman who murdered a black teenager in my state. The resulting wrongful death suit led to a $7 million verdict and the bankruptcy of the Klu Klux Klan in the South. That case was brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
But when I spoke to ADF last year, I learned that the Southern Poverty Law Center had classified ADF as a “hate group.” Many in the media simply parroted it as fact. Amazon relied solely on the SPLC designation and removed ADF from its Smile program, which allows customers to donate to charities.
They have used this designation as a weapon, and they have wielded it against conservative organizations that refuse to accept their orthodoxy and choose instead to speak their conscience. They use it to bully and intimidate groups like yours which fight for the religious freedom, the civil rights, and the constitutional rights of others.
You and I may not agree on everything—but I wanted to come back here tonight partly because I wanted to say this: you are not a hate group (Emphasis added).
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/08/09/sessions-calls-out-splc-conservative-leaders-optimistic-fbi-cut-ties/