Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) thinks he has figured out why the Southern Poverty Law Center put the FRC on a list of “hate” groups. He quotes Richard Cohen, SPLC’s president, as saying, “We don’t believe that some of these people should be put on national TV.”
This is indeed the media strategy behind using the “hate” label on conservatives. The label has been used by the George Soros-funded Media Matters group to argue that certain “hate” groups should not be taken seriously by the media.
Here’s how it works: the SPLC labels a group hateful and Media Matters then uses the label to argue that the group doesn’t deserve any media attention. The real danger comes when this authoritarian mentality is translated into government action.
On “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning, Perkins said, “The left is losing the debate over public policy and the direction of this nation, as evidenced in the election last month, so what they want to do is they want to shut down all debate over issues” by using labels against their political opponents. Perkins, who noted that 31 states have rejected same-sex marriage, said the SPLC’s main objection is to the FRC’s work in documenting the harm caused by homosexual behavior and promiscuity to society, the family, and the individuals practicing it. “To be silent on that—that would be hateful,” he said.
To a large extent, the censorship being advocated by the SPLC is already a reality. Consider the media’s reluctance to mention that Army Soldier Bradley Manning, the alleged source of classified U.S. Government information to WikiLeaks, is an open homosexual.
Jim Kouri, Fifth Vice-President of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, has written about this curious state of affairs in a column titled, “WikiLeaks’ connection to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: The silence is deafening.”
Or consider the major media’s failure to mention the first U.S. case of transfusion-transmitted HIV infection reported to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) since 2002. The case involved a bisexual man who lied on his questionnaire and gave HIV-infected blood. “He indicated that the sex often was anonymous and occurred while he was intoxicated,” the official report says.
The case is relevant to the debate over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because one can safely assume that the next demand, if the Senate votes to repeal the Pentagon’s homosexual exclusion policy, will be to lift the prohibition on gay men donating blood.
Then, as expected, opponents of lifting the prohibition will be denounced by the SPLC and Media Matters as “haters.” This is how the racket works
The inevitable result if they have their way is that more people dependent on blood or blood products for medical operations or procedures will come down with HIV and die.
Killing the innocent to please a special interest group that wants access to the military and the blood supply sure sounds hateful to me.
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Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.
