Why are some Christian organizations deemed “hate groups” when plenty of other ones that hold very similar beliefs avoid the label? The anti-gay American Family Association is a “hate group,” but the evangelical megachurch in your community that condemns LGBTQ rights gets a pass. What’s up with that?

The difference is inadvertently illustrated really well in this article by Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute (also deemed a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center).

Higgins wants to expose the horrible, horrible people working in local public schools… but, really, the worst thing she has to say about some of them is that they’re openly gay, transgender, or (gasp) liberal.

I’ve left out the educators’ names in the excerpts below since they don’t need more attention for this, but look at how she writes about these people:

There’s ___________, former Fremd High School social studies teacher and current history department chair at Oak Park and River Forest High School. ___________ is “married” to a man and has posted pictures on his Facebook page of his faux-marriage as well as his hearty support for Planned Parenthood. When he was a teacher at Fremd, he posted pictures of Che Guevara and Karl Marx on his official school web page along with this image titled “Evolutionary Theory”: ___________ and ___________ have every right to express their foolish beliefs and values on their Facebook pages, and parents have every right to say these men are poor role models for their children and refuse to place their children under the their tutelage. The mere fact that ___________ is legally “married” — though not in reality married — to a man teaches young people a harmful, untruthful lesson and renders him an unfit role model.

I was on board with Higgins in thinking the Bush meme on an official school website crossed the line, but that’s clearly not her main concern. She’s mostly apoplectic that this department chair is gay. She can’t admit he’s married to another man. And she definitely doesn’t think he should make that publicly known.

Higgins went even further in denouncing a transgender man who teaches lessons on “Sexual Orientation and Gender Stereotypes.”

The executive director and founder of the CIPHC is ___________…, a lesbian who masquerades as a man and is “married” to a woman. … Do PSD 150 administrators, teachers, and school board members really believe this is the kind of person who should be teaching 13-year-olds? Do they really believe this is the kind of person most parents in their community want to teach their children about sexuality?

If there’s a reason this person shouldn’t be educating kids, I’m all ears, but being trans isn’t one of them.

This, by the way, is why IFI and other like-minded groups get the “hate” label. They don’t just disagree with things like marriage equality for religious reasons. They actively treat LGBTQ people as if they’re untouchables with a psychiatric disorder.

Eventually, Higgins gets to what she’s been wanting to say all along:

What is never discussed in the lesson is whether the beliefs of the “LGBTQ” community are objectively true or good. No dissenting views are included.

What are those “beliefs”? That LGBTQ people are people? No dissenting view is needed.

Christian parents should not allow their children to be trained up by men and women who view Scripture as hate-filled, ignorant bigotry. Christians should not allow their children to be trained up by men and women who do not recognize the intrinsic value of all human lives — and all means all — including those yet in their mothers’ wombs. Christian parents should not allow their children to be trained up by adults who don’t recognize and respect the immutability and profound meaning of sexual differentiation. Christian parents should not allow their children to be trained up by adults who believe that inclusivity and compassion demand the affirmation of sexual perversion or confusion or the relinquishment of physical privacy. Christians parents should not allow their children to be trained up by those who cannot see that marriage has a nature central to which is sexual complementarity and without which a union is not in reality a marriage.

In short, Christians parents should only let their children be taught by other conservative Christians who believe women should be forced to give birth if they ever get pregnant, who condemn gay and lesbian identities, who don’t even recognize transgender people, and who refuse to acknowledge same-sex marriages as marriages.

Thankfully, there’s an ever-decreasing pool of candidates for that Bigot Bubble.

It’s also the exact opposite of what I’d think Christians would want to do. If you surround yourself only with people who share your narrow views about humanity, there’s never an opportunity to learn, to be challenged, to have tough conversations, or even to evangelize.

Yet that’s the only way Higgins can maintain control of her beliefs: calling for isolation. That shows you just how weak her Christianity is. Believers like her are unable to withstand even the mere presence of those who might disagree.

How pathetic. I grew up with religious teachers of varying stripes, in public schools, my entire life. Some of them were overtly religious, though I don’t recall any who illegally preached in the classroom. If they were good teachers, though, what they did outside of school didn’t matter. At least my parents understood that.

