Southern Poverty Law Center blasted for adding mothers group to its hate list: ‘Absurd’

The
Southern Poverty Law Center’s
decision to add a pair of prominent parental rights organizations to its “hate map” has drawn scorn from conservatives and
Republican
politicians.

The SPLC, whose “hate map” purports to show extremist organizations, added several parental rights groups, such as Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education, to the map after it released its “The Year in Hate and Extremism”
report
for 2022. The map labels the parent groups as “anti-government.”

“Schools, especially, have been on the receiving end of ramped-up and coordinated hard-right attacks, frequently through the guise of ‘parents’ rights’ groups,” the SPLC said in its report. “These groups were, in part, spurred by the right-wing backlash to COVID-19 public safety measures in schools. But they have grown into an anti-student inclusion movement that targets any inclusive curriculum that contains discussions of race, discrimination and LGBTQ identities.”

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The organization has included a number of other prominent conservative organizations in its hate map, including the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom and the Christian policy organization the Family Research Council. In its report, the SPLC compared Moms for Liberty and other organizations like it to opposition to school desegregation and the civil rights movement.

“Galvanizing supporters around supposed ‘parental rights’ and ‘family values’ is nothing new — similar rallying cries were adopted by those who opposed school desegregation during the civil rights movement and by the Moral Majority of the 1980s,” the center wrote in its report. “These political slogans have been used repeatedly because they are effective, framing the organizing of far-right activists as something done solely out of real concern for children.”

Nicole Neily, the president of Parents Defending Education, blasted the SPLC for adding her organization to its map and accused the center of “clout-chasing” by including parents groups among its hate groups.

“PDE’s work speaks for itself,” Neily said. “We stand with parents to protect their children from discrimination, whether in the form of racially segregated ‘affinity groups’ and ‘healing spaces,’ speech-chilling bias response programs, or parental exclusion policies. SPLC’s self-serving clout-chasing undermines justice for actual victims of discrimination. As such, SPLC’s ever-expanding definition of ‘hate’ now means little more than ‘opinions which we dislike.’”

On its Twitter account, Moms for Liberty said its inclusion on the map was part of a “coordinated attempt to silence and suppress us.”

“Last year the Biden White House worked with the NSBA to label Parents Domestic Terrorists,” the organization said, referring to the National School Boards Association 2021 letter that compared parents protesting school board meetings to domestic terrorists. “Today, the SPLC labels our organization — an org full of moms who care about their kids — a Hate Group.”

Several prominent Republican politicians also joined in criticizing the SPLC, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) calling the updates to the hate map “absurd.”

“The Southern Poverty Law Center cares more about silencing parents who want to have a say in their children’s education than they care about a violent domestic terrorist among their own ranks,” Cruz tweeted.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) used the occasion to call for the SPLC to lose its tax-exempt status.

“I’ve long argued that the SPLC should lose its tax-exempt status,” Cotton tweeted. “Engaging in systematic defamation is not a tax-exempt purpose.”

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Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called Moms for Liberty his “favorite ‘hate group'” while promoting a town hall in New Hampshire focused on parental rights.

The SPLC did not respond to a request for comment.