Four Religious Orgs Added to SPLC List of Anti-Gay Hate Groups

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Make room Westboro Baptist Church, American Family Association and Family Research Council. Four additional groups have been designated anti-gay hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The New Civil Rights Movement reports that without much (or any) fanfare, the SPLC added four organizations to its list of anti-gay hate groups over the past several months. The newly inducted foursome represent organizations in Texas and New York City.

The newly added hate group with the biggest profile is the ATLAH World Ministry Church located in the Harlem section of New York City. The fringe church first came to national attention when the message "Obama has released the homo demons on the black man. Look out black women. A white homo may take your man." The group's leader Pastor James David Manning has called for gays and lesbians to be stoned to death and claims that Starbucks uses "sodomite semen" in their lattes for added flavor.

Proving that hate isn't just a Christian thing, the next inductee is a fringe Hassidic group called The Jewish Political Action Committee (JPAC). Located in Brooklyn, JPAC has distributed signs around New York that claim homosexuality is "a sin worse than murder and that G-d set AIDS to punish gays." In 2011, LGBTQ Nation reported that the group claimed that "man on boy" pedophilia "surged" in New York since same-sex marriage was made legal in the state.

Located in Plano, Texas, Probe Ministries has a syndicated radio show with more than 1 million listeners. According to The Texas Observer, the group published materials on its website saying that gays molest children at higher rates and die younger. In a recent post on their website titled "What I'd love to say to Bruce Jenner", they told the transgender olympian "It's your thinking that needs to be adjusted, not your body."

The Stedfast Baptist of Fort Worth, Texas made SPLC's list after Pastor Donnie Romero called for the "death of 'dirty faggots'" last December. Additionally, according to Raw Story, he has bragged about harassing strangers he perceives to be gay -- including a transgender woman in line behind him at Walmart who he called a "bull dyke" with a "Bart Simpson haircut."

"Their gay-bashing is intense," Heidi Beirich, director of SPLC's Intelligence Project told the Texas Observer. "Stedfast Baptist Church is very crude in its hatred. That's not a complicated thing to explain why we put them on the hate list."

"The rhetoric is becoming much harsher for sure," Beirich said of anti-gay hate groups. "I think some of the groups are becoming harder-line, whether we've listed them or not, because they're losing on a lot of fronts."


by EDGE

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