Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Two pro-gun groups conspired with an anti-gay hate group to create political mailers that used a gay couple’s copyrighted engagement photo to attack candidates in the 2012 Colorado Republican primaries, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). [ Read more → ]

JACKSON, Miss. — An advocacy group said Thursday that gay and lesbian students at a south Mississippi school are subjected to bullying and harassment from classmates and faculty. [ Read more → ]

SIKESTON, Mo. — An openly gay teen in the southeast Missouri town of Sikeston will be allowed to take his boyfriend to the prom, school district officials said Friday. [ Read more → ]

A school district in southeast Missouri is facing a threat of legal action over a policy that prohibits same-sex couples from attending prom together. The Southern Poverty Law Center on Thursday accused the Scott County Central School District in Sikeston, Mo., of discrimination and gave the district until Feb. 25 to revise the school dance policy or face a potential lawsuit. [ Read more → ]

Someone has to sit Tony Perkins down and school him on the truth. I am very certain that Perkins is already aware of this truth, but he needs to be told publicly so that everyone else can know. The Southern Poverty Law Center is not responsible for Floyd Corkins’ near massacre at FRC headquarters last year. If Perkins wants to blame someone, he should look to himself and his organization. For years, while under the guise of Biblical principles, the FRC has dehumanized the LGBT community.... [ Read more → ]

The Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit accusing a New Jersey organization of consumer fraud for offering conversion therapy services – a discredited practice that claims to convert people from gay to straight. [ Read more → ]

The annual "Mix It Up at Lunch Day" -- a decade-old program that encourages school children to overcome cultural, societal, or other differences by sitting with those they don't normally hang out with during lunch -- has been attacked by the American Family Association (AFA), as a "radical gay indoctrination program." [ Read more → ]

LEESBURG, Va. -- The Loudoun, Va., Board of Supervisors on Tuesday commented on allegations that Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) used county resources for political gain and that he has engaged in questionable campaign fund raising practices. [ Read more → ]

DENVER – The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and co-counsel filed a federal lawsuit today against an anti-gay hate group that took a gay couple’s engagement photo and misappropriated it for a political ad that attacked a Colorado lawmaker’s support for same-sex civil unions. [ Read more → ]

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- The Southern Poverty Law Center said it plans to file a lawsuit on Wednesday, Sept. 26, in Denver in the U.S. District Court for Colorado against a Falls Church, Va.-based anti-gay group over a direct-mail campaign that used an altered version of a New York gay couple's engagement photo without their knowledge or permission. [ Read more → ]

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- A coalition of human rights groups is calling on public officials not to attend this week's Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., because its host, the Family Research Council, has spread demonizing lies about the LGBT community, and because one of its co-sponsors, the American Family Association, has linked homosexuality to the Holocaust. [ Read more → ]

Do words have consequences? For years, we at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have argued that they do. ... when the religious right spreads false and defamatory propaganda like the completely baseless notion that gay men molest children at rates far higher than their heterosexual counterparts, LGBT people end up, much more frequently than most people realize, at the wrong end of a baseball bat... [ Read more → ]

WASHINGTON -- A Virginia man who entered the the lobby of the conservative anti-gay group, the Family Research Council, on August 15 and shot a security guard, was indicted Wednesday on federal charges related to the incident. [ Read more → ]

Violence is violence and the culture that creates it is responsible. There is a difference between denouncing violence and inciting violence – this seems obvious but this past week has shown us that the line between these two is slim. [ Read more → ]

On Friday, FRC’s second in command – Executive Vice President Jerry Boykin – appeared on the Glenn Beck Program and called the SPLC an “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, Marxist organization.” Continuing, he said that the SPLC is an “evil group of people” who “are dangerous.” [ Read more → ]

Political disagreement is never a justification for violence, but the FRC should not seek to exploit this tragedy in an attempt to gloss over the organization’s long and documented record of anti-gay extremism. [ Read more → ]

WASHINGTON — Floyd Lee Corkins II, 28, of Herndon, Va., has been charged with assault with intent to kill while armed, and interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition as a result of Wednesday’s shooting incident at the Family Research Council headquarters in Washington. [ Read more → ]

WASHINGTON -- Family Research Council president Tony Perkins on Thursday said he blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center for the "reckless rhetoric" that led to a shooting at the FRC headquarters on Wednesday. [ Read more → ]

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Tennessee Democratic Party on Friday disavowed the winner of its primary for U.S. Senate because they claim the candidate is a member of an anti-gay hate group. [ Read more → ]

JACKSON, Miss. -- A lesbian couple in Mississippi has been refused use of a state-owned museum facility that is routinely hired out for weddings and other functions because they are gay. [ Read more → ]