Alliance Defending Freedom castigated by Southern Poverty Law Centre - US

Right Wing Watch reported on Abbott going to ADF

The anti-LGBT US hate group Alliance Defending Freedom is currently in an online war with the US Southern Poverty Law Centre. I've been reading about it in recent days and the events are like this:

1. Southern Poverty Law Centre has listed the Alliance Defending Freedom as an anti-LGBT hate group.

2. The US ABC reported on the US attorney general Jeff Sessions after he had a closed door speech to the Alliance Defending Freedom. The ABC reported that the ADF was "allegedly" a hate group.

3. The Alliance Defending Freedom went bananas at both the ABC for reporting them as a hate group and the Southern Poverty Law Centre for listing them as a hate group. From the linked article there apparently butter doesn't melt in the ADF's mouth.

4. Which brings us to the present, of which the Southern Poverty Law Centre has published a scathing attack on the Alliance Defending Freedom, stating categorically that the ADF is in fact a hate group completely against anything LGBT.

This week, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions lent the credibility of his office to a group committed to legalizing discrimination against the LGBT community.

 In a major speech to Alliance Defending Freedom at the group's "Summit on Religious Liberty" in Dana Point, California, Sessions expressed sympathy for the group's contention that its religious freedom is jeopardized by laws and court rulings that protect the rights of LGBT people.

 SPLC President Richard Cohen noted the irony that the attorney general "would suggest that the rights of ADF sympathizers are under attack when the ADF is doing everything in its power to deny the equal protection of the law to the LGBT community."

 The ADF is, in fact, not about defending freedom, as its name says. Rather, it's a hate group that cloaks itself in religion as it spreads demonizing lies about the LGBT community in this country and seeks to criminalize it abroad. If the ADF had its way, gay people would be back in the closet for fear of going to jail.

 The group supports the fraudulent practice of gay-to-straight conversion therapy. Its first president, Alan Sears, has argued that pedophilia and homosexuality are "intrinsically linked" (a dangerous falsehood long employed by anti-LGBT hate groups). In 2003, its lawyers argued against the eventual U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said sexual conduct between consenting adults is protected by the Constitution, a decision that struck down state laws criminalizing gay sex. Southern Poverty Law Centre

The ADF gained attention in Australia when our ex-prime minister Tony Abbott went to New York to speak at one of their meetings, in which he spewed his usual bile about gays and marriage equality. Much to the chagrin of his lesbian sister I might add.

The article goes on to question Jeff Session's commitment to civil rights after making a speech at the ADF. Surely something that would also apply to Abbott after his speech at the hate group.