There are times when conservatives would actually like to be proven wrong. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was certainly hoping for that in his 2015 dissent in the Obergefell same-sex marriage case. But unfortunately for him — and millions of other Americans — his predictions are coming true in the most painful way possible. Like us, he feared that redefining marriage would ignite a firestorm of persecution against anyone who believed otherwise. Any opposition to the Court’s ruling, he prophesied, would be used as a license to “vilify those who disagree, and treat them as bigots.” “We are seeing this come to pass,” he said soberly during a speech to the Catholic group Advocati Christi. “It is up to all of us to evangelize our fellow Americans about the issue of religious freedom… A wind is picking up that is hostile to those with traditional moral beliefs.”

That wind is blowing all right — right down C Street to the State Department, where LGBT activists are desperately trying to shut down debate. When the Trump administration put together its delegation for the UN Commission on the Status of Women, it invited The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) to join it as public-sector representatives. Nothing about that should come as a surprise. Both organizations are respected voices in the conservative movement that reflect the Trump administration’s values. During the Obama years, these types of positions were filled by left-wing groups in support of radical liberal policy. But the administration has changed — and, naturally, so have the people chosen to represent it.

That fact seems lost on the extremists at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), who are hysterical that groups with natural views on marriage and gender have been given a seat at the UN table. In a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, they demand the removal of both groups. “If the United States is truly committed to improving the lives of women, including LBTQ women, in the U.S. and beyond, then Lisa Correnti and Grace Melton and the organizations they represent should not be the public face of our delegation. We urge you to immediately rescind the appointment of these delegates who do not represent our shared American values,” HRC writes. Now, on top of having to fight against the Obama holdovers who aren’t representing the Trump administration, these conservatives are also coming under sustained assault by the LGBT establishment for even being on the delegation.

Using the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) reckless “hate” label as cover, they claim C-Fam will take the State Department in an ugly direction. Despite all of the SPLC’s credibility problems (even the FBI has distanced itself from the group!), liberals still insist on invoking the group to help distort the record of C-Fam and The Heritage Foundation (neither of which has ever advocated for violence against people who identify as gay). Sadly, as Justice Alito pointed out, these are the times we live in — when holding mainstream views on sexuality as well as a biblical view of marriage is an excuse to demonize and marginalize. And even more frustrating, this is an organization with no real method to its labeling. At one point, SPLC even added Dr. Ben Carson to its “extremist” list because of his biblical views (and only took him off the list after a lot of criticism).

While their methods are arbitrary, their goal is not. Since SPLC and HRC can’t win on the facts, they use these labels to silence and denigrate their competition. But if they’re hoping to intimidate the Trump administration, they’ve got another thing coming. In case liberals haven’t noticed, the new president actually believes in what the Left says it does: diversity of opinion. As FRC’s Travis Weber explains, “These activists’ real problem is that they don’t like the current state of international law, so they have to twist, manipulate, and obscure it to fit their agenda. International law, properly understood, only consists of two areas: treaty and international law.” Organizations like OutRight and HRC know that current treaties don’t protect their agenda items, so their main aim is to cram agenda items like abortion and contraception into certain terms in treaties protecting women and children — despite the fact that these treaty provisions mention nothing of the sort. The only way the activists get where they want is remaking the law as they go along, similar to judicial activists in the United States.

An even deeper problem is that these activists use the term “human rights” but have no clue what it means. The fact the Left claims that “sexual orientation” and other terms are “human rights” isn’t rooted in anything higher than its own assertion. What gives it the right to define what it means? And why should its policy preference take preference? It doesn’t. Just because it cloaks it as “human right” won’t make it so. The only solution is to search for a standard common to all human beings as derived from a higher authority. Christians and conservatives are uniquely able to offer this. Thank goodness the Trump administration recognizes that and made sure they were represented at the UN in the first place.

Originally published here.

SPLC: We’re Not FOIA, We’re Against You

If the Left is worried about FRC’s influence, we must be doing something right! In a pathetic attempt to hang on to some scrap of respectability, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is taking aim at ours. As part of a new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) campaign, the activists at an organization that inspired the first act of domestic terrorism in DC are demanding to know how much the Trump administration consulted us before overturning Obama’s school bathroom and shower mandate.

It’s in the public’s interest, SPLC argues, “to know if extremists influenced the administration’s decision to withdraw guidance advising schools to treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity.” “The lives of real people are affected every day by decisions made by the president and his inner circle,” said David Dinielli, SPLC deputy legal director. “The American people have a right to know who is helping to craft policy coming out of the White House — especially if people or organizations with extreme views have a seat at the table.”

Since when did a policy with 66 percent support become an “extreme view?” If anyone’s outside the mainstream on this debate, it’s SPLC and its friends! They’re losing everywhere from the White House to your house, and they’re resorting to every possible distraction from the real issue. As usual, the group also implicated former FRCers, like Ken Klukowski, and current staff, like Ken Blackwell. His response?

The SPLC website has been delinked as a reference to the Justice Department and the organization has been identified as a nurturer of a domestic terrorist. It is involved in an improper and shameful FOIA fishing expedition against President Donald J. Trump’s administration. Their goal? To intimidate defenders of constitutionally protected religious liberty. They have also taken direct aim at Family Research Council and myself as a former leader of Trump’s domestic transition team. The SPLC will fail.

On the bright side, SPLC will probably be waiting awhile for the government to respond. If Obama’s track record on FOIA requests was any indication, it might hear back by 2022.

Originally published here.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.