Initially founded as the National Federation for Decency, the American Family Association (AFA) originally focused on what it considered indecent television programming and pornography. The AFA says it promotes "traditional moral values" in media. A large part of that work involves "combating the homosexual agenda" through various means, including publicizing companies that have pro-gay policies and organizing boycotts against them. The AFA has a variety of outlets to disseminate its message, including the American Family Radio Network, its online One News Now and the monthly AFA Journal. In early 2011, the AFA claimed more than 2 million online supporters and 180,000 subscribers to its Journal. In Its Own Words “Homosexuality is a poor and dangerous choice, and has been proven to lead to a litany of health hazards to not only the individuals but also society as a whole.”

–AFA Action Alert, July 20, 2012 “[Islam] is, in fact, a religion of war, violence, intolerance, and physical persecution of non-Muslims.”

–Tim Wildmon, March 6, 2012 "The homosexual movement is a progressive outgrowth of the sexual revolution of the past 40 years and will lead to the normalization of even more deviant behavior."

– Don Wildmon, AFA website, 1999 (still posted as of 2011). "Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews."

– Bryan Fischer, AFA director of issue analysis for government and public policy, 2010 "If President Obama, Congressional Democrats, and homosexual activists get their wish, your son or daughter may be forced to share military showers and barracks with active and open homosexuals who may very well view them with sexual interest."

– AFA press release, February 2010 "Homosexuality is not only harmful to homosexuals themselves, but also to children and to society."

– Stephen Bennett, AFA writer, 2004 "As with smoking, homosexual behavior's ‘second hand' effects threaten public health….Thus, individuals who choose to engage in homosexual behavior threaten not only their own lives, but the lives of the general population."

– Gary Glenn, president of Michigan chapter of AFA, 2001 "[T]he homosexual lifestyle is characterized by anonymous sexual encounters and celebration of sexual obsession and perversion unparalleled in any other social group."

– Richard Howe, "Homosexuality in America," AFA publication, 1994

I’m not LGBT, but I’m thinking that’s pretty hateful. Although I am black, but I’m not complaining that they’ve included black groups on the list, even if one of those groups is the Nation of Islam. Let’s be real, Farrakhan has talked some really hateful shit. He owns it, so should the rest of y’all.

But of course those on the right are incensed, incensed, that general gay hating could be associated with general black hating. Particularly at Pajamas Media who find the inclusion of anti-gay Christian groups, disturbing, and then go on the blame the SPLC for a domestic terrorist attack.

So Christian organizations that seek to foster traditional sexual morality are compared to the KKK and black separatists? To his credit, the CNN reporter also admitted that "some critics of the SPLC say the group's activism biases how it categorizes certain groups." Andone brushed aside such criticism, however, on the basis that "since the FBI doesn't keep track of domestic hate groups, the SPLC's tally is the widely accepted one." It is indeed widely accepted — so widely accepted, that the very list CNN condones and posts for 31 million viewers actually inspired a terror attack in 2012, and may have inspired the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). In the summer of 2012, a man named Floyd Lee Corkins III broke into the Family Research Council (FRC), armed with a semi-automatic pistol and Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwiches, aiming to kill every person in the building. In February 2013, Corkins piled guilty to committing an act of terrorism and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Where did Corkins get the motivation and the address to attack the FRC? In his own words, the convicted terrorist told the FBI that he targeted this Christian group because it was listed as an "anti-gay group" on the SPLC website.

Corkin’s attack is just horrific — although the Chick_Fil-A sandwhich bit is kinda hilarious — but I also think the fact that the FBI doesn’t keep track of domestic hate groups is pretty alarming. It begs the question if not the SPLC, then who else is keeping an eye on this?

It should be noted that the site PJmedia links to about the guilty plea by Corkins the “Left Wing Terrorist” was the Washington Post, and it should also be noted that this shooter didn’t kill anyone and in fact only managed to wound an unarmed guard who heroically tackled and disarmed him.

New details about Floyd Lee Corkins II emerged Wednesday in federal court, where he admitted to the politically motivated shooting at the conservative think tank in downtown Washington. Corkins, 28, pleaded guilty to three felony charges: a federal charge of transporting a firearm and ammunition across state lines and D.C. charges of assault with intent to kill and committing an act of terrorism while armed. In the days before the shooting on Aug. 15, Corkins purchased a semiautomatic pistol, had it modified to be “more effective” and received training at a shooting range, court documents show. He drew up a list of four conservative groups and loaded a backpack with a 9mm SIG Sauer pistol, two magazine clips and 50 rounds of ammunition. “Were it not for the heroic guard who tackled Floyd Corkins, he could have succeeded in perpetrating a mass killing spree in the nation’s capital,” U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen said in a statement. “This case highlights the dangers of access to high-capacity magazines that allow killers to inflict carnage on a mass scale in the blink of an eye.”

I think there’s possible point here about a courageous good guy not needing a gun to take down a bad guy with a gun — but I’ll leave that alone for now and just move on to the point that people weren’t nearly so lucky in 2016 during attack on Planned Parenthood in Colorado.

On Friday, according to officials, Mr. Dear entered a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, killing three people and wounding nine others with a semiautomatic rifle. The attack, which ended with his surrender to the police after a harrowing nationally televised standoff in the snow-dusted Western city, was a brutally violent and very public chapter in a life story whose details are not fully known. [...] One person who spoke with him extensively about his religious views said Mr. Dear, who is 57, had praised people who attacked abortion providers, saying they were doing “God’s work.” In 2009, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for the privacy of the family, Mr. Dear described as “heroes” members of the Army of God, a loosely organized group of anti-abortion extremists that has claimed responsibility for a number of killings and bombings.

Army of God is a not just a hate group, they are a Christian domestic terrorist group whose members are linked to the murders of Dr. George Tiller and Dr. Barnett Slepian and his bodyguard, the firebombing of abortion clinics, the bombing of gay nightclubs and also the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing. I take them somewhat more seriously than one bumblenuts with a 9mm and some Chick-Fil-A sandwiches. They are not included on the SPLC list because they do not currently have a roster of members, at least not until they’ve committed and been caught for a terrorist act.

[Full disclosure: I’ve had the leader of the AoG Rev. Don Spitz post on my personal blog and threaten me because I’ve criticized Olympic bomber Eric Robert Rudolph. But I’m still here and Rudolph is still in a Supermax.]

Again, that someone attacked the Family Research Council is awful, terrible, but it’s nothing in terms of the scale of attacks that have been perpetrated by not just KKK and neo-Nazis but also Christian Hate Groups over the years. [Also by the way, the KKK are a Christian hate Group too).

FBI Hate Crimes stats for 2016 are as follows:

Bias motivation Incidents Offenses Victims1 Known

offenders2 Total 6,121 7,321 7,615 5,770 Single-Bias Incidents 6,063 7,227 7,509 5,727 Race/Ethnicity/Ancestry: 3,489 4,229 4,426 3,383 Anti-White 720 876 909 831 Anti-Black or African American 1,739 2,122 2,220 1,588 Anti-American Indian or Alaska Native 154 161 169 118 Anti-Asian 113 131 137 123 Anti-Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander 9 9 9 8 Anti-Multiple Races, Group 136 178 190 104 Anti-Arab 51 56 57 60 Anti-Hispanic or Latino 344 449 483 380 Anti-Other Race/Ethnicity/Ancestry 223 247 252 171 Religion: 1,273 1,538 1,584 859 Anti-Jewish 684 834 862 421 Anti-Catholic 62 63 65 45 Anti-Protestant 15 20 22 12 Anti-Islamic (Muslim) 307 381 388 243 Anti-Other Religion 74 90 91 53 Anti-Multiple Religions, Group 34 48 48 20 Anti-Mormon 7 8 8 3 Anti-Jehovah's Witness 2 3 3 1 Anti-Eastern Orthodox (Russian, Greek, Other) 28 28 30 23 Anti-Other Christian 36 37 39 13 Anti-Buddhist 1 1 1 0 Anti-Hindu 10 12 12 11 Anti-Sikh 7 7 8 10 Anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc. 6 6 7 4 Sexual Orientation: 1,076 1,218 1,255 1,225 Anti-Gay (Male) 675 765 787 806 Anti-Lesbian 124 141 147 127 Anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender (Mixed Group) 234 262 271 254 Anti-Heterosexual 20 23 23 13 Anti-Bisexual 23 27 27 25 Disability: 70 76 77 67 Anti-Physical 26 29 30 29 Anti-Mental 44 47 47 38 Gender: 31 36 36 28 Anti-Male 7 10 10 7 Anti-Female 24 26 26 21 Gender Identity: 124 130 131 165 Anti-Transgender 105 111 111 149 Anti-Gender Non-Conforming 19 19 20 16 Multiple-Bias Incidents3 58 94 106 43

The highest rate of incidents are quite clear. They are in order of frequency by incidents reported: Anti-Black (1,739), Anti-White (720), Anti-Jewish (684), Anti-Gay (675), Anti-Latino (344), Anti-Muslim (307), Anti-LGBT (234), Anti-Native American (154), Anti-Lesbian (124), Anti-gender identity (124), Anti-Asian (113) and Transgender (105).

If you put all the separate slices of LGBT together — Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Gender Identity — their combined total is 1,262!!

Clearly LGBT hate is a real thing when placed side by side with other types of biases — therefore there is good reason to include Anti-LGBT groups on the Hate Groups list, even if those groups happen to have a particular political or religious view that is shared by others.

Hate isn’t exclusive to any particular political or social ideology. Trying to pretend that “only the Left” is hateful is just as false and wrong-headed as claiming that only the Right is hateful.

Both are capable of it, but the fact is the Right, led by so-called “Christians”, is generating a lot more hate, and causing a lot more violence than just about anyone else and the reason they’re going after CNN and the SPLC so much is both of them have honestly and truthfully bothered to say so.

And that’s why the Right, from RT to PJ, have to go after them, to cover the tracks of blood trailing behind them. And they aren’t going to stop, not after a RWNJ took a gun and attacked the officers of the Capital Gazette, not after personal death threats have been put out against Don Lemon and Brian Stetler.

They won’t stop until a Corkins, a Robert Dear or a Eric Rudolph shows up at CNN headquarters with a gun or a bomb and does some serious damage.

Actually, they probably won’t stop after that either.