USA TODAY

In a column published last week, Jessica Prol Smith harshly criticized the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights advocacy group. Smith is employed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian organization.

Letters to the editor:

On Aug. 17, USA TODAY published a column by a former Family Research Council employee, who currently works for the Alliance Defending Freedom, blaming and attacking our work fighting hate and extremism.

The writer equates SPLC to attempted murderers and claims our work highlighting the anti-LGBTQ organization caused a gunman to walk into FRC’s headquarters in 2012 and injure a security officer.

Let me be clear: We condemn all violence. Every year, my department releases its hate group count. In 2018, the number of hate groups reached a record high — 1,020 — and yes, both FRC and ADF are listed.

FRC uses demonizing rhetoric about the LGBTQ community, portraying LGBTQ people as sick, vile, perverted, incestuous and a danger to the nation.

ADF also spreads harmful lies about LGBTQ people, including linking being gay to pedophilia and claiming that a “homosexual agenda” puts society at risk. ADF has also supported criminalizing gay relationships.

Contrary to what FRC and other anti-LGBTQ groups we list claim, we do not list them for their opposition to marriage equality or their belief that being LGBTQ is a sin.

As we note on our website, we define a hate group as an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.

The groups we list vilify others because of their race, religion, ethnicity or LGBTQ status — prejudices that strike at the heart of our democratic values and fracture society along its most fragile fault lines. The FBI uses similar criteria in its definition of a hate crime.

The writer claims that we use our hate group label to “intimidate and mislead for raw political power and financial benefit,” but that could not be further from the truth. We educate the public about the harmful pseudoscience that these groups push and the real-life consequences.

The writer also attempts to dismiss the FRC’s and ADF’s attacks on the LGBTQ community by pointing to news stories about the SPLC, but there’s no excusing their vitriol and no justification for their hate that’s impacted millions.

Our work, especially our commitment to the communities we serve, has never been deterred, and it will keep driving us as we continue to look forward to truly modelling the change we want to see in the world.

As groups like FRC and ADF try to infect the mainstream with their anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and lies, we will continue to call them out for what they truly stand for, and we make no apologies for exposing them for it. We will not back down from calling out hate and bigotry wherever we see it.

Heidi Beirich, director of the intelligence project for the Southern Poverty Law Center; Montgomery, Ala.

I couldn't agree more with Smith's column. Sadly, so many of these institutions start for the right reason and then are corrupted to fit someone's agenda.The list is long. I appreciate thoughtful voices to counter the prevailing assumptions.

Thomas Felch; San Francisco

It appears that Smith used her column to discredit the SPLC rather then address why her firms ended on the “hate group” list to begin with. It leaves readers having to do their own research on her background.

Even with all of the problems at the SPLC, I was still left wondering why organizations with innocuous names like the Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom would have drawn the SPLC's attention. She conveniently omits that key piece of information. The story on the SPLC deserves to be told, just by a more credible source without an agenda. I would have taken her opinion more seriously if she had addressed her disagreement with SPLC head-on rather then trying to skirt around the real issue of why her employers were labeled as hate groups.

Tyler Whelan; Boise, Idaho

From Facebook:

The SPLC is a long-respected organization that has properly identified countless hate groups. If you find yourself in one of those groups identified as being aligned with hate and/or bigotry and/or the group also attracts people like neo-Nazis, white supremacists and xenophobes, then maybe you should take a good hard, honest look at whom you are associating with and why.

— Jennifer Collins

How is this logical? I don't condone violence against far-right Christian organizations that spread propaganda (and there are quite a few), but how does SPLC become a hate group because a third party decided to act with violence in the FRC office?

— Zheng Chen

Just because a group does not agree with other people doing wrong does not make them a hate group.

— Bruce Cheyney

Hate groups in America:I grew up a white nationalist. We never blamed ourselves for mass shootings like El Paso.

The problem the writer faced was too many people with easy access to guns.

—Hank Chandler

I wouldn't trust any of these kinds of organizations to be truthful, to give us thoughtful, thoroughly researched, unbiased analysis without making blanket statements about entire demographics. When they target an entire group because of their race, gender, religion or sexual orientation, it's a sure sign they merely want to stir the pot and keep people hating one another.

—Sheila Ramon