The Southern Poverty Law Center was too intolerant for the U.S. Army. Too controversial for the FBI. And too inflammatory for the Obama Justice Department. But despite SPLC’s baggage — which includes connections to two liberal gunmen — the extremists seem to have found a home at one of America’s leading charity indexes. After a fan of SPLC’s shot five people at last week’s congressional baseball practice, most people couldn’t distance themselves from the discredited group fast enough. Not GuideStar.

At a time when even the mainstream media is questioning SPLC, the charity index is rushing to embrace the “hate labeling” that inspired Floyd Corkins to walk into our lobby with the goal of killing as many people as possible. Now, just days after the shooting of House Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), who is also branded an extremist on SPLC’s website, most people are shocked that GuideStar — whose calling card is its neutrality — would use the liberal organization as a resource. But justify it they have. Now, when potential donors search at least 46 conservative organizations, they’ll be greeted by a big red banner, alerting them that these charities were labeled “hate groups” by the SPLC, presumably to steer them away from contributing.

This sudden shift is less surprising when you consider the politics of GuideStar CEO Jacob Harold. A former employee of Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network, Harold isn’t exactly the poster child of objectivity. His social media accounts leave no doubt where his allegiance lies. According to our friends at Liberty Counsel, who are also victims of this smear campaign, “Harold was a host for a NARAL Pro-Choice D.C. men’s event in 2014, and he blogged for Huffington Post. He also donated to the Obama campaign in 2011 before joining GuideStar in 2012. His wife is also a pro-abortion advocate. Harold tweeted a picture of himself at the so-called ‘Women’s March’ in January 2017, holding a protest sign obviously directed against President Donald Trump.” The message? “It turns out that facts matter.”

Well, Mr. Harold, they matter here too. That’s why 41 conservative groups and individuals are demanding that GuideStar remove the hate banners from their listings and return to their claimed position of neutrality that Americans expect. In a letter protesting the move, the signers write:

Your designations are based on determinations made by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a hard-Left activist organization. As such, SPLC’s aggressive political agenda pervades the construction of its “hate group” listings.

The SPLC has no bona fides to make such determinations. It is not a governmental organization using rigorous criteria to create its lists, and it is not a scientifically-oriented organization. The SPLC is merely another “progressive” political organization… The “hate group” list is nothing more than a political weapon targeting people it deems to be its political enemies. The list is ad hoc, partisan, and agenda-driven. The SPLC doesn’t even pretend to identify groups on the political Left that engage in “hate.” Mosques or Islamist groups that promote radical speech inciting anti-Semitism and actual violence are not listed by the SPLC even though many have been publicly identified after terrorist attacks.

If anyone’s guilty of hate, it’s the organization defining it! SPLC’s own Mark Potok made no bones about the group’s ultimate agenda, saying, “Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on…. I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.” And they think Christians are the threat? What’s worse, SPLC is quite open about the fact that their labels are completely arbitrary. “Our criteria for a ‘hate group,’ first of all, have nothing to do with criminality or violence… It’s strictly ideological.”

As The Wall Street Journal argues in an explosive column, “The Insidious Influence of the SPLC,” there isn’t even a “veneer of objectivity” — not at SPLC, and now not at GuideStar. “While the SPLC rightly condemns groups like the KuKlux Klan, Westboro Baptist Church, and the New Black Panther Party, it has managed to blur the lines, besmirching mainstream groups like FRC…” And that campaign has consequences, as WSJ points out. “The SPLC’s work arguably contributes to the climate of hate it abhors…” After reminding people about Corkins’s connection to the group, the editors go on to say that “SPLC found itself in the awkward position of disavowing the man who opened fire on Republican members of Congress during baseball practice [after it was discovered he "liked” SPLC on his Facebook page].“

Conservatives can only shake their heads. As we wrote to Harold, "Does it not concern you that within the past five years, the SPLC has been linked to gunmen who carried out two terrorist shootings in the D.C. area?” For GuideStar to abuse the trust of supporters and link arms with one of the Left’s most disgraced organizations is a decision it will almost certainly come to regret. After all, it only exposes the index for what it has become: a politically active arm of the liberal movement in America.

Join FRC and 40 other nonprofits in calling out GuideStar for its decision to use SPLC’s bias hate labeling. Give GuideStar a rating on its Facebook page that reflects its hostility (click on the star rating system in the right column), and let it know that you disapprove of its decision to align with SPLC by leaving a comment on its page. Use hashtags #GuideStar and #NoLongerNeutral on Twitter and tag @GuideStarUSA and its CEO @JacobCHarold in your tweets. In the meantime, if you’re looking for nonprofit reviews you can trust, check out Charity Navigator or the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

Originally published here.

Sanders’s Slanders Don’t Impact Vought Vote

No thanks to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), President Trump’s pick for the Office of Management and Budget is one step closer to his new job. After a faith-based grilling that left Sanders red-faced and Americans in shock, Russell Vought’s nomination squeaked out of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee by the narrowest of margins, 8-7. The hearings caught the country’s attention when Sanders made the case that Christians like Vought are unfit for public office — even in jobs that have nothing to do with faith!

While Sanders fired shot after shot at OMB’s soon-to-be second-in-command, Vought was the picture of poise, explaining that he thinks everyone has inherent dignity, even if they don’t agree with him that Jesus is the only way to salvation. It was a surreal scene for anyone watching, especially since Vought’s convictions — not his qualifications — were Sanders’ main concerns.

Like many in the media who were taken aback, National Review’s Ian Tuttle explains how the Left’s religion of non-religion is unfairly influencing politics. “There is a long and stupid tradition of believing that the American Right threatens to impose an Evangelical Christian theocracy on the United States — that every Republican lawmaker is looking to erect an official church and make women cover their ankles. In reality, it is the proudly irreligious Left that has smuggled religious debates back into our politics. It is the unabashedly secular Left that has knocked down the ‘wall of separation’ and made the afterlife an immanent political issue.”

Fortunately, plenty of others piled on, including the Conservative Action Project (which released this letter demanding that liberals stop their religious intolerance) and Sen. James Lankford (R-OK). Wednesday, the Oklahoma leader fired back at Sanders’s religious test.

There was some dispute in a different hearing about Russel Vought and his faith and this came up in a budget meeting about is he too much of a Christian to be able to serve. I just want to make a public statement that that’s appalling to me that that became part of the debate at the dais that someone made a statement that because he was strong in his Christian faith he was not qualified to serve. Article XI of the Constitution says there no religious test for any officer of the United States and that shouldn’t even have been a discussion in that committee hearing. I’m glad that wasn’t a discussion or a consideration here, but it is one of the things that we should not evaluate people. He’s in an economics position. It doesn’t matter if he’s Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or no faith at all. We’re faith neutral. And so I’m grateful that was not an issue for any of us and I would hope that’s not a growing trend for us as a body.

Check out FRC Action’s new ad on Sanders controversy below, then encourage your senators to vote for Vought!

Originally published here.

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