The non-profit-tracking organization Guidestar USA, following the lead of the Southern Poverty Law Center, decided to label 46 non-profit groups as "hate groups." Included on that list were conservative and Christian organizations like The Family Research Council (FRC) and The American Family Association, who work to protect Judeo Christian values in an increasingly progressive culture - hardly a "hateful" initiative.
Yet, Guidestar, the “neutral aggregator of tax data on charities," took some bad advice and targeted the organizations anyway.
Forty-one of the 46 designated "hate groups" penned a letter to Guidestar asking the organization to remove the "defamatory labeling." The organization reversed course on Monday.
Guidestar's decision encouraged but did not fully appease Family Research Council President Executive Vice President Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jerry Boykin. It was imperative that Guidestar distance itself from the SPLC, he explained, because the latter has been linked to domestic terrorism - including the recent attack at a congressional baseball game practice.
"We are generally encouraged by GuideStar's decision to remove the labeling of non-profit webpages like ours based on characterizations made by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a bitterly partisan political organization that has been linked in federal court to a domestic terrorist shooting," Boykin said in a statement. "The SPLC continues to list on its website people such as House Majority Whip Steve Scalise who was recently shot by James Hodgkinson who 'liked' SPLC's Facebook page."
Of course, this whole shameful ordeal barely registered on the mainstream media's radar.