The anti-gay group Americans
For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) is livid about being
labeled a hate group, gay news site ChicagoPride.com
reported.
The Chicago-based gay rights group Gay
Liberation Network (GLN) successfully lobbied the Southern
Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to add AFTAH to the list of hate groups
it monitors. The SPLC included the group in the most recent issue of
its quarterly publication Intelligence Report.
AFTAH is a “national organization
devoted exclusively to exposing and countering the homosexual
activist agenda,” according to the group's website.
AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera was the
first to rail against President Obama's appointment of openly gay
Kevin Jennings to the post of Assistant Deputy Secretary for the
Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. LaBarbera called Jennings
“radical” and “the antithesis of 'safety'.”
The group also supports the so-called
ex-gay movement that promotes the notion that gay men and lesbians
can alter their sexual orientation through mostly Christian worship.
“There are few things as sinister,
and as cynical, as the Left's manipulation of 'hate' as a political
weapon to malign Christians and patriotic, conservative Americans,”
AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera said on the group's website in
response to the SPLC's decision.
“Thankfully, it seems the only people
taking the SPLC seriously anymore are the liberal media and hardened,
'Move On'-types on the Left. The SPLC is a spent force when it comes
to moral authority – and even some honest liberals are seeing
through its disingenuous campaign to redefine morality as 'hate' and
'bigotry.'”
“To defend historic Judeo-Christian
moral norms is not 'bigotry' and to disagree with homosexual
activists is not 'hate',” he added.
The 47-year-old LaBarbera calls himself
a “conservative critic of the homosexual activist movement.”
“Getting LaBarbera's website labeled
a 'hate group' is important because it helps assist the political
marginalization of a man who has dedicated his career to dying others
legal equality,” Bob Schwartz of GLN told ChicagoPride.com.