In Defense of the Southern Poverty Law Center

When I was in Junior High, I attended a private Christian school where my youth pastor used to show us videos of Christians in public schools being arrested for praying at the flagpole, as well as future Christians being executed because of “liberals who want to take away our right to worship.” So I get it. When a guy walks up to a conservative Christian organization’s headquarters and starts shooting, it confirms what many people already believe: Evangelical Christians in America are a persecuted minority; and the people behind the persecution are groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that labels anyone who “takes a stand for Biblical righteousness” a hate group. The storyline would sound reasonable if it weren’t for one small problem: It’s completely ridiculous.

To my friends in the evangelical community, what happened at the headquarters of the Family Research Council was a despicable act of violence that deserves to be condemned without reservation, but please don’t use what happened as a pretext to shore up prejudice against those in the LGBT community—who, by the way, have also condemned this act of violence—or as a pretext to exact vengeance against groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that works to provide a service to society by raising the alarm against hate and extremism.

In a statement to the press, Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, said,

“Corkins was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have been reckless in labeling organizations as hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy.”

He went on to say,

“They have repeatedly and without cause demonized FRC, and have spent years stirring up anger in the homosexual community and directing that anger toward an organization whose only crime is to promote and defend the classic American values of faith, family and freedom.”

Putting aside the logical fallacy that criticism = giving someone a license to shoot, the fact is the Southern Poverty Law Center didn't label the Family Research Council as a hate group because “they disagree with them on policy” or because they “defend the classic American values of faith, family, and freedom.” If that were the case, they would have put Focus on the Family on the hate group list, or the National Organization for Marriage. Both of these groups teach that homosexuality is a sin and lobby against gay marriage.

The stated reason the Southern Poverty Law Center has put the Family Research Council on the hate group list since 2010 is, according to their website

“because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage……We criticize the FRC for claiming, in Perkins’ words, that pedophilia is ‘a homosexual problem’”

And because

"An FRC official has said he wanted to ‘export homosexuals from the United States.’ The same official advocated the criminalizing of homosexuality.”

It’s one thing to say the Bible says homosexuality is a sin and I oppose gay marriage. It’s another thing to say these people are out to get your children! It’s like when Kirk Cameron pegged homosexuals as “destructive to so many of the foundations of Western Civilization” , and then cried foul when the “liberal” media called him out on it. You can’t single out a group of people as a threat to civilization, and then cast yourself in the role of a victim when people suggest that your words are hate speech.

I believe that we in the American evangelical community are guilty of a persecution complex. Which is sad, because I’ve been to countries where New Testament believers are actually persecuted, like the videos my teachers used to show me in Junior High. The believers I've met in these countries often live quiet and peaceful lives, sharing their faith and loving the people that torture them and rat them out to the police. They’re the ones the Apostle Peter talked about, who “do good and suffer” and “take it patiently.” This, according to Peter “is commendable before God.”

New Testament believers living in places that actually persecute religious minorities often suffer for simply being who they are, and their suffering, when taken patiently for following in the footsteps of Christ, who “when reviled, did not revile in return” is commendable before God.

I’m not sure that “persecuted” Christians in America can say the same thing.

Can pro-gay and anti-gay Christians work together against gay bullying?

By Ben DeVan

In light of several high profile cases of gay related bullying, this essay may disgruntle almost everyone who reads it.

First, it may anger bullies who want sympathizers or "boys will be boys / girls will be girls" dismissers of bullying among religious believers who see homosexuality as against God's intent, having harmful physical / mental health risks, and symptomizing "societal decay."

Second, it may irk anti-homosexuality religious believers, a number of who may inwardly -- even to their own horror -- sympathize with bullies, even if they would never engage in bullying themselves, or who view bullying as collateral damage in a societal struggle of sexual virtue vs. vice.

Third, it may upset pro-homosexuality religious and/or gay activists who, like some of their conservative counterparts, see concessions or cooperation across these particular lines as unacceptable appeasement, betrayal, or compromise in a zero sum game where anything less than worldwide celebration (or condemnation), and not mere tolerance or acceptance of homosexuality, is complicity with evil or holding hands with haters.

To my gay activist and pro-homosexuality religious friends: don't too quickly dismiss potential allies from the other side. When mostly Christian and Muslim affiliated Uganda began considering harsh sanctions against various homosexual acts, some of the most vocal American opponents were public figures and organizations associated with "anti-gay" politics: Charles Colson, Rick Warren, and Exodus International, to name just a few.

Rick and Kay Warren are also active in the worldwide battle against AIDS, a disease often associated with homosexuality and causing massive suffering to its homosexual and heterosexual victims. In his 1988 20 Hot Potatoes Christians are Afraid to Touch, progressive Evangelical Tony Campolo shared that Evangelicals as early as the 1980s organized benefit concerts with thousands in attendance donating proceeds to fight AIDS. Likewise, one of my (once self-described) fundamentalist friends raises awareness of gay human rights issues in Iran. He says, “I don’t think homosexuality is good, but I don’t believe in beheading or imprisoning gays for homosexual acts. We should protect people persecuted for any reason, including their sexuality.” Finally, a college administrator friend who is also a Southern Baptist received a report about a faculty member who told a student that s/he "hate(s) homosexuals." My friend responded swiftly and professionally. I cannot give details, but the situation resolved in a conciliatory manner that would please readers of multiple political persuasions.

I can already imagine the comments section bristling with objections that anti-homosexuality religious believers, simply by holding or expressing beliefs that homosexuality is harmful or wrong, disregard or contribute to a milieu that allows for, even encourages bullying of gays. Point taken. I can see this as sometimes but not always true, in that opposing homosexuality can translate into irritation, which can conceive hatred, which may give birth to violence or discrimination against homosexuals. To be fair, there is sometimes violence and discrimination against people who oppose homosexuality or admit to anything less than an enthusiastic endorsement of it. But pretending that political and religious agreement are essential to civility or to standing against bullying denies human capacity for nuance.

St. Augustine may have originated the phrase, "love the sinner, hate the sin," as the most notorious variation of this mindset, advising, "love for persons and a hatred for their vices." This is echoed, Yale University's Miroslav Volf believes, by the Qur'an Surah Al Imran 3:30 which talks about a person's soul as distinct or wishing to be made distant from some of its actions. The United Methodist Church refuses to approve homosexual practice, but at the same time, it holds up gays as people of "sacred worth" beloved by God, and opposes many forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation. Whether one sees homosexuality as a vice, virtue, or as value-neutral, these examples allow for at least the possibility of nuance from an anti-homosexuality perspective.

I don't know Tony Campolo's most recent position on homosexuality, but when I attended a Baptist Student Union (BSU) conference at the University of Georgia a number of years ago, Campolo responded to those who called him "soft" on homosexuality, "I am not soft on homosexuality, but I am very soft on homosexuals!" The response from the audience of several thousand mostly baptist college students? Thunderous applause.

To objectors who say that one cannot love or stand common cause with another person without endorsing all or a perceived core of that person's feelings, beliefs, opinions, actions, sexual preference / orientation, or self-identity, I reply that most people, including readers of this essay, do so on a regular basis at least sometimes at work, in family, and in friendships. Can any reader not think of instances where they disagreed (even strongly) with another person's acts, mindset, even core self-identity, yet still interacted civilly, loved dearly, or demonstrated active care for that colleague, brother, sister, mother, father, friend?

To my anti-homosexuality, as well as my pro-homosexuality, friends: In my recent essay, Tea with Hezbollah, I mentioned Jesus' "Parable of the Good Samaritan" as a partial paradigm for relations between Christians and Muslims. Might it also apply to religious believers relating with gays, particularly gays who are the victims of bullying?

Samaritans for Jesus' Jewish audience were not just ethnically distinct, they represented corrupt religion and bad theology (cf. Luke 9 and 17; John 4 and 8). The Zondervan NIV Study Bible notes, "the person Jesus commended was neither the religious leader nor the lay associate, but a hated foreigner. Jews viewed Samaritans as half-breeds, both physically and spiritually. Samaritans and Jews practiced open hostility, but Jesus asserted that love knows no … boundaries." That the "heretical" Samaritan gets doctrine wrong but ethics right makes his role as hero all the more shocking to Jesus' hearers.

To anti-homosexuality religious believers: Let's grant for the sake of argument that you discern the "right doctrine" about homosexuality. I wonder whether pro-homosexuality religious and gay activists are not sometimes better at fulfilling Jesus' ethic in standing up for homosexuals? Given the choice, do you think "right doctrine" or "right action" is more pleasing to Jesus? Do you "love the sinner" as much or more than you "hate the sin?"

When I share the Good Samaritan with students, I ask who Jesus would designate the wounded victim, Priest, Levite, and Samaritan if he were speaking to early 21st-century audiences. Might Jesus say, "An Evangelical pastor and a Biblical (or Qur'anic) inerrancy professor passed by the bullied homosexual, but a lesbian activist took pity." Or alternately, would Jesus say, "a lesbian activist and a gay senator passed by, but a Wahhabi Muslim or fundamentalist Christian took pity on the victim?"

Whether we are gay, straight, conservative, liberal, nonreligious or religious, we are human beings who can learn from the best of our exemplars in opposing bullying in any form, including bullying against gays. If we cannot agree on other things, even on the neutrality, goodness, or dysfunctional nature of homosexuality; I say with John Wesley (who himself quoted Jehu in 2 Kings 2:15), let's stand together against bullying, "If your heart is as my heart, then take my hand." Will you also take each others' hands?


Benjamin B. DeVan has taught religion, philosophy, and African American literature at North Carolina Central University, Peace College, and a January term mini-course at MIT titled, "Religion: Bringing the World Together, or Tearing the World Apart?" He completed his MA in Counseling at Asbury Theological Seminary, his MDiv at Duke University, a ThM at Harvard in World Religions with a thesis on evangelical Christians and Islam, and is now a doctoral candidate at a historic British university writing a dissertation on the New Atheism.

Hurray for Rick Warren for speaking out against Uganda’s anti-gay bill, but where are the rest of the Christian leaders?

As a career missionary to Africa, I fear what would happen to me on judgment day if I didn’t speak out against what is happening in Uganda right now in the name of Christ. I was in the middle of typing my monthly newsletter when I decided to check my e-mail. The subject line read, “Pastor Rick Warren condemns Uganda anti-homosexuality bill.” Hurray for Rick Warren, but my question is where’s everyone else? Christian Right leaders in the U.S. are constantly griping that the media portrays them as bigoted towards homosexuals. Well Mr. Dobson and Mr. Sekulow, now would be a perfect time to prove them wrong. I’m still waiting for my urgent action e-mail.

I’m not talking about an issue that falls within the realm of perfectly legitimate political debate—like whether gay marriage should be legal or not. What I’m talking about is a bill that if passed would condemn homosexuals to prison, would give the death penalty for homosexuals with HIV, and would criminalize heterosexuals that support gay rights. The bill being considered would actually force heterosexuals to report their gay friends and neighbors to the authorities. I would expect something like this from a group like the Taliban, but from a nation with a vast majority of Christians? Who would have thought? But then again, I’m not sure why I’m surprised.

I’d like to think that American Christian leaders have nothing to do with the direction that Uganda’s government is sliding towards, but I know it’s not true. For starters, I’ve been to Uganda and have lived and traveled extensively throughout Africa. Based on my experience, the level of influence that American pastors, evangelists, and missionaries have in predominately Christian countries in Africa is astronomical, especially when you consider how many African churches and ministries are dependent on American support. As difficult as it may be to believe, in most English speaking countries in Africa, American televangelists are like rock stars. The way the average Ugandan feels towards people like T.D. Jakes, Reinhard Bonnke, and Benny Hinn is what the average American feels towards people like—ironically—Bono. If I’m exaggerating, it’s only slightly.

Lest I be misunderstood, I’m not suggesting that the above-mentioned leaders are guilty of stoking anti-gay bigotry in Uganda. I use their names only to underscore the fact that, in most cases, American Christian leaders wield a greater influence over the pop-culture in African countries than they do in their own country. Even pastors of small to mid-sized congregations in the U.S. can go to countries like Uganda or Kenya or Nigeria and preach to tens of thousands of people at a time—and maybe even meet with the country’s leaders. It happens every day. American Christianity has enormous influence in Africa. With great influence comes great responsibility.

Let’s not forget that there was a man about 80 years ago that came to power on the platform of criminalizing consensual gay sex. His name was Hitler. There’s a reason why the Apostle Paul said to the Corinthian Church, “For what have I to do with judging those who are outside?” (I Corinthians 5:12) Paul must have known that when Christians try to legislate morality outside the confines of spiritual discipline within the Church, the result is usually an ugly monster that looks nothing like Christ. It’s time for American pastors, missionaries, and evangelists, along with our African brothers and sisters declare loudly to the world—not in our name!