John Stossel: The Southern Poverty Law Center Scam (https://reason.com/video/the-southern-poverty-law-center-sca...)
Megan McArdle: Southern Poverty Law Center Gets Creative to Label "Hate Groups" (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-09-07/southe...)
This quote from your article seems to indicate it's just people who either don't realise they're bigots, or who think their bigotry is acceptable enough to society that they can get away with it complaining about being called out.
I'd never heard of the Ruth Institute before, and thought they may be a very focused adoption group based on the article. But I just read the latest thing on their website and I can state clearly that they do have a problem with gay people.
In a speech in Uganda she says that the death penalty usually isn't necessary for crimes such as being gay, that gay people hijacked the civil rights movement, that you shouldn't use the word 'gay' as that just plays into their hands amongst other things that have a common theme of a very restrictive view on sexual activity.
But sure, as long as she claims she has no problem with gay people, she’s probably a wonderful and misunderstood person.
Yes, if you campaign to stop death penalty advocates from marrying or adopting children, because you accuse them all of being pedophile rapists that are destroying society and you knew that people were regularly killed for having that belief then your attack on them as being "morally unacceptable" would be textbook hate too.
Free speech means other people get to be stupid and say stupid things, and as long as they don't resort to violence, your only recourse is to explain to everybody why they're wrong.
Not when the "policy ideas you disagree with" repress individuals for aspects of their personal lives.
Or to publish empirical evidence just because it implies something ideologically inconvenient?
Here's a thought experiment. Take it as axiomatic that heterosexual adoptive parents will, all else equal, generally raise more successful children. You're not going to want to do this because it's disadvantageous to a protected class, but there is nothing about the universe that requires all facts to be convenient. So assume for sake of argument that this fact is inconvenient but true. Now, sexual orientation may be a protected class, but so are children, so we've got to balance their interests. We've got to make a choice about which one is more important and when.
But you can't even recognize the need to make a choice if nobody is allowed to say the inconvenient fact.
Successful at what? Experience says that they won't be more successful at being good to other people.
Your line of reasoning also leads one to say that black people shouldn't reproduce because their children are statistically less likely to become wealthy. That doesn't strike me as being an honest ethical framework.
The ethical choice would be to advocate for making the world less shitty, not for population cleansing or other acts of repression.
No, see, you're just challenging the axiom.
The reason for the thought experiment is that nobody starts off by knowing things like that one way or the other. You don't know that it is true but you also can't assume that it isn't just because it being true would be inconvenient. You have to consider the possibility that not every fact is advantageous to your in-group, and be willing to accept the cases where that actually happens. Because it will.
Just because somebody says something you don't like doesn't inherently mean that they're wrong. We shouldn't punish people for saying things that could be the truth. If you think they're wrong then you make your case. Everybody else gets to hear you both and make up their own mind. Censoring the opposition is cheating.
> Your line of reasoning also leads one to say that black people shouldn't reproduce because their children are statistically less likely to become wealthy. That doesn't strike me as being an honest ethical framework.
No, it doesn't, because existence isn't the same thing as adoption. The average black kid may have a harder life than the average white kid but that doesn't mean given the choice they would choose not to be born.
Adoption isn't a matter of the kid existing or not; the kid exists. The question is who gets the kid. And the answer should be based on what's best for the kid. You can have a debate about how to define "best" but for any given definition, that's an empirical question with a factual answer. Which means we actually need the facts. And if the facts turn out to be convenient, that's great. But if they're not, they're not. The other side gets to make their case.
You have to be willing to lose when you're wrong because it's the only way you can win when you're right. Anything else is just a war whose victor is decided by might rather than truth.
Words fail me. Have you ever known a gay person well?
The proper criteria for adoption is whether the adopting family can provide a good home for the child. That is all that matters.
To make the moral issue more stark, let's flip the axiom a bit. For sake of argument, let's assume that Christian families, all else being equal, raise less successful children. Now, in this situation, how do we balance the needs of the child vs. the rights of a Christian couple that is looking to adopt? After all, religion is a protected class, but the child's well-being must be safe-guarded.
Or to voluntarily choose not to associate with them, which is all the SPLC is advocating people do.
Or are you for freedom of speech but against freedom of association?
In general, your mistake is confusing "constitutionally can't be excessively limited by the US government" and "a good idea".
Except that they're lying about it by classifying them as a "hate group" over ideological differences.
There is a major category difference between the Klan, out there burning crosses and lynching people, and some nonviolent conservatives out there saying nonviolent conservative stuff.
Pointing out the difference isn't violating freedom of association, it's just pointing out the difference.
I agree can completely freedom of speech means you can accuse the SPLC of lying. But it also means the SPLC can call whatever they want a hate group, and the solution to that is also more speech. So far in our little marketplace of ideas you've failed to get me to buy what you're saying.
As to the argument that it doesn't confuse anybody, it sure seemed to confuse that guy who went and shot up the Family Research Council because they were on the list.
And the answer to that is more speech. This is the more speech. Nobody is saying that we should shut down the SPLC because they publish a misleading list, only that everybody should be aware of how they're misleading people.