25 August, 2017
The Florida based Coral Ridge ministry is also known as D. James Kennedy Ministry, and it claims in the suit that the hate group designation deterred the ministries reputation amounting to defamation. "We desire all people, with no exceptions, to receive the love of Christ and his forgiveness and healing".
As Tim Cook mentioned in an email last week to employees, Apple has taken another step to promote equality and justice after the Charlottesville tragedy as it has teamed up with the Southern Poverty Law Center to accept donations through iTunes this morning.
According to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Alabama where the SPLC is based, the designation was based on the ministry's opposition to homosexuality, which the ministry noted dates back to the founding of Christianity. "We are not a hate group".
Many news organizations have reported on SPLC's tally of hate groups SPLC says are operating throughout the country.
The SPLC's attacks on Christian organizations are significant to all Christians.
"I applaud D. James Kennedy Ministries for its efforts to expose the truth about the Southern Poverty Law Center, a discredited organization that has become so controversial that even the Obama Justice Department backed away from the group - along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Army". Their hate map was cited by convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins as the way he found the FRC in his 2012 attack on the FRC building in which he shot and wounded a security guard before being subdued. It's listed as a group with "beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics".
"It's nothing more than an attempt to bulldoze over those who disagree with them, and it has a chilling effect on the free exercise of religion in a nation built on that", Rabe continued. "We decided not to let their falsehoods stand", he added.
But increasingly, especially since Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election, both liberals and conservatives say that SPLC has grown overzealous - bringing down its huge and very high-profile "hate-group" hammer on not just people and organizations that actually encourage hate and violence against certain groups, but also on those who simply don't fall in line with liberal positions on hot-button social issues.
Jerry Boykin, vice president of the Family Research Council, praised the DJKM for "its effort to expose the truth about the Southern Poverty Law Center". (Only to retract the label later due to public backlash.) This is wrong.
British Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz recently stated on Bill Maher's television show that he is considering suing the left-wing organization for including him on its list of "anti-Muslim extremists".
