News Release
For Immediate Release: November 29, 2010
Contact: Diane Gramley 1.814.271.9078 or 1.814.437.5355
Why Were the CDC, FDA and HHS Not Included in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Group List?
(Harrisburg) – The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Winter 2010 Intelligence Report lists 18 of what they call “anti-gay groups.” The list includes 13 ‘hate groups’ including the American Family Association (AFA), the national organization the American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA of PA) is connected with. Since both the AFA and AFA of PA quote the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) on a regular basis, why weren’t they also included in the list?
“Even as recently as June 11th the Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability voted 6-9 not to recommend lifting the lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men. The CDC fact sheets recognize the high rates of HIV/AIDS among men who have sex with men,” noted Diane Gramley, president of the AFA of PA.
A man who has had sex with another man even one time since 1977 cannot donate blood under FDA’s policy.
Again why were these agencies not included in the Southern Poverty Law Center list because of their discriminatory policies and fact sheets?
What is the Southern Poverty Law Center today: Ken Silverstein, writing for Harper’s Magazine, addressed this in 2000: “Today’s SPLC spends most of its time – and money – on a relentless fund-raising campaign, peddling memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the collection plate. ‘He’s the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of the civil rights movement,’ renowned anti-death-penalty lawyer Millard Farmer says of Dees, his former associate, ‘though I don’t mean to malign Jim and Tammy Faye.’
“The American Institute of Philanthropy gives the Center one of the worst ratings of any group it monitors,” continued Silverstein. “Morris Dees doesn’t need your financial support. The SPLC is already the wealthiest civil rights group in America, though [its fundraising literature] quite naturally omits that fact. … ‘Morris and I…shared the overriding purpose of making a pile of money,’ recalls Dees’s business partner, a lawyer named Millard Fuller. ‘We were not particular about how we did it; we just wanted to be independently rich.’”
“The Southern Poverty Law Center’s actions reflect its far-left-leaning and its own discriminatory views against those with deeply held religious beliefs about the sin of engaging in homosexual acts. But it especially reveals the strong dislike it has for those who do not shy away from speaking the truth about the dangers of homosexuality. Its inclusion of the AFA alongside the KKK shows the Southern Poverty Law Center’s lack of understanding of the difference between true compassion and ‘hatred,’” Gramley concluded.
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