Newsweek, taking its cue from the radically leftist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), maligned the conservative Family Research Council (FRC), which is hosting its annual Values Voter Summit, by titling its article about the event, “Donald Trump To Speak At Hate Group’s Annual Event, A First For A President.”
Newsweek writes, “President Donald Trump will be the first sitting president to address the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described as a “rogues’ gallery of the radical right.”
Newsweek adds, “The anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council, labeled as a hate group by the SPLC, has hosted its annual summit since its inception in 2006. … No other sitting president has ever taken the decision to address the summit, although Trump has spoken before the conference on three previous occasions—even during his presidential election campaign.”
Newsweek quotes SPLC President Richard Cohen telling the The Independent: “By appearing at the Values Voter Summit, President Trump is lending the legitimacy of his office to a hate group that relentlessly demonizes LGBTQ people and works to deny them of their equal rights. His appearance puts the lie to his campaign promise to be a friend to the LGBTQ community. Bigotry is not an American value, and our president should speak out against it.”
Newsweek slams the Family Research Council’s Biblical view on homosexuality, stating, “The group organizing the summit has previously commented on homosexuality. ‘Family Research Council believes that homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large, and can never be affirmed. It is by definition unnatural, and as such is associated with negative physical and psychological health effects.’”
Newsweek concludes, “It is not clear what topic Trump will address during his speech, but the group’s overwhelmingly negative attitude towards the LGBTQ community has prompted questions about whether a president should be attending a day of glorified hate speech.”
As The Daily Wire has reported, “In 2011, National Review‘s Charles Cooke pressed the SPLC as to why they weren’t tracking the Occupy Wall Street movement after a group affiliated with the movement plotted to blow up a bridge in Cleveland, Ohio. After a back-and-forth with a male representative from the SPLC, Cooke got the representative to admit: “We’re not really set up to cover the extreme Left.”
In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins shot a security guard for the FRC, admitting that he wanted to “kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-Fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces, and kill the guard” after he saw the FRC listed on the SPLC’s website as a “hate group.”
In 2014, the SPLC listed Dr. Ben Carson in their “Extremist Files” list. The FBI removed the SPLC as a “resource” the same year for their “hate crime Web page.”
Yet even with plenteous evidence that the SPLC is a radically Left and incredibly biased source, Newsweek has the gall to cite it as a bastion of morality while condemning the Biblical perspective as emblematic of “hate.”