The SPLC: Another favorite academic primary source falls apart

In a story about the Women’s March on Washington, Time magazine published various “Portraits of Dissent” that included the views of a 17-year-old Calvert County, Maryland, high school senior with the words “Nasty, Queer, Bitch,” marked on her cheeks and forehead. She was quoted as saying rights were in danger because of the Trump presidency and that Vice President Mike Pence “is someone that supports electroshocking people like me to turn us into people we aren’t.”

Pence never said any such thing. But where did this fictional and irrational claim come from? And why did Time publish this lie?

A new report from the National Task Force for Therapy Equality to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) identifies precisely where many of the false claims are originating. The report, entitled, “Lies, Deception, and Fraud,” accuses the Southern Poverty Law Center, Human Rights Campaign, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights of a hate campaign designed to ban psychotherapy for individuals with sexual and gender identity conflicts.

You may recognize the Human Rights Campaign as the pro-Obama group that furnished a speaker for the FBI’s recent gay “pride” summit.

In one case documented in the report, a transgendered woman associated with a New Jersey homosexual-rights organization claimed she had been tortured at a “conversion therapy camp” and that it constituted “child abuse.” But no such camp ever existed. It did exist in a 1999 movie, “But I’m a Cheerleader,” starring drag queen RuPaul. In Washington State, gay rights advocates claimed that children were subjected to shock therapy and ice baths to get them out of the lifestyle. No evidence of such practices was ever presented.

Evidence shows that same-sex attractions can be changed through counseling and can result from bad relations with a parent or sexual abuse. Indeed, the Restored Hope Network (RHN), representing the largest coalition of ex-homosexual ministries in the world, just held a national conference.

The National Task Force for Therapy Equality is part of the Equality And Justice For All, a coalition of psychotherapists, psychiatrists, physicians, public policy organizations and clients. The co-coordinator, Christopher Doyle, is a former homosexual who says that therapy changed his life. He is now married to his wife and they have five children.

Despite claims in the media that people are born gay, this is a myth perpetuated by left-wing homosexual organizations. There is no scientific evidence for the claim. Another myth is that counseling away from same-sex attraction involves shock therapy. There is no evidence whatsoever that the technique has been used or coerced on children or adolescents to modify sexuality.

Perhaps the best known of the three organizations cited above, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), calls the idea of counseling homosexuals to leave the lifestyle “quackery.”

The SPLC has a notorious reputation, even on the left. It raises money by using terms like “homophobia” and “Islamophobia” to demonize people supporting traditional Christian values. The group’s “Hate Map” of conservative organizations inspired a homosexual militant to launch a terrorist attack on the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Family Research Council in 2013. It was “liked” on Facebook by the left-wing Bernie Sanders supporter who tried to massacre a group of Republicans at a baseball game outside of Washington, D.C.

Its fundraising practices, which have generated a reserve fund of about $300 million, are at the heart of the complaint by the National Task Force for Therapy Equality to the FTC. The FTC complaint asks for action to be taken against the three organizations because they use “deceptive and fraudulent” claims. Such claims, of course, are prominently featured in the liberal media, which regularly refer to the SPLC as a “civil rights” organization.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. This column is excerpted from an article that he wrote for Accuracy in Media.

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