SPLC labels Moms for Liberty as ‘extremist’ hate group

The Southern Poverty Law Center is facing criticism for listing the parental rights group Moms for Liberty on its “hate map” alongside the infamous Ku Klux Klan white supremacist group.

The left-leaning activist organization compared Moms for Liberty’s message of “parental rights” and “family values” to organizations that opposed desegregating schools during the U.S. civil rights era. SPLC also likened the parental rights group to the Moral Majority that advocated for Christian prayer in schools and against homosexuality. 

SPLC accused Moms for Liberty of being “at the forefront” of the “mobilization” of “hard-right attacks” against schools, noting that such groups appeared to gain momentum due to the pandemic-related school closures. 

“But they have grown into an anti-student inclusion movement that targets any inclusive curriculum that contains discussions of race, discrimination and LGBTQ identities,” the report noted. 

Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich told The Christian Post in a Monday statement that the group’s goal is to help parents be a part of their children’s education, a mission that began two years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The nationwide school lockdowns prompted some parents to withdraw their children from public school, feeling as if remote learning measures were harmful to their child’s education.

“Empowering parents continues to be our mission today and that has fueled our organization’s growth — like wildfire to now 45 states in the country,” the organization’s co-founders stated. 

“Name-calling parents who want to be a part of their child’s education as ‘hate groups’ or ‘bigoted’ just further exposes what this battle is all about: Who fundamentally gets to decide what is taught to our kids in school — parents or government employees?” they continued. “We believe that parental rights do not stop at the classroom door and no amount of hate from groups like this is going to stop that.”

SPLC’s list includes 1,225 organizations, labeling 523 of them as so-called hate groups and 702 as “antigovernment extremist groups.” The list of “hate groups” included 230 Moms for Liberty chapters and 12 chapters of another parental rights group, Parents Defending Education. 

Another group included on SPLC’s “hate group” list is the Family Research Council, a faith-based think tank that advocates for traditional family values.

FRC President Tony Perkins said in a statement shared with CP earlier this month that SPLC’s hat map is “dangerous and wrong,” citing a 2012 shooting at the FRC headquarters by a gunman who was inspired by the SPLC hate map. The suspect attacked the FRC building after SPLC included the conservative family-values think-tank on its list of “anti-gay” organizations. 

“It is a cloaked attempt by the SPLC to intimidate and silence anyone who holds to a biblical worldview or advocates for conservative principles,” Perkins said about SPLC’s hate map. “Yet somehow, the SPLC is still viewed as a legitimate source of information and analysis by the mainstream media and even government agencies.” 

In 2018, the SPLC was forced to issue a formal apology to British social commentator Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist revolutionary group member who was deradicalized, and his Quilliam Foundation for listing them on its hate map. The SPLC paid Nawaz $3.3 million in a settlement for falsely claiming that he and Quilliam were an anti-Muslim group.

SPLC’s branding of parental rights organizations as hate groups comes amid multiple instances of parents objecting to the curriculum at their children’s schools that has garnered media attention. 

As CP reported last month, a group of parents filed a lawsuit against members of the Montgomery County Board of Education and Montgomery County Superintendent Monifa B. McKnight. The complaint alleged that the school district barred parents from opting their children out of classroom instruction that includes LGBT-themed books. 

“They (the parents) come from many faith backgrounds, including diverse strands of Islam and Christianity. Their concerns reflect those of thousands of other Montgomery County parents from a variety of faiths and political persuasions,” the lawsuit stated. 

In September 2021, the parent of a student in Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia read aloud sexually explicit material and shared graphic images featured in two books available in the district’s high school libraries at a school board meeting. 

The mother read aloud from one of the books, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe: “I can’t wait to have your c— in my mouth. I am going to give you the b—— of your life and then I want you inside me.” 

She also read an excerpt from another book, Lawn Boy, which has a section promoting pedophilia by depicting an underage boy performing fellatio on an older man, which is a depiction of illegal child sexual assault. 

The U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation last month into another Virginia-based school district, Loudoun County Public Schools. A letter by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights by America First Legal Foundation (AFLF) in January had raised concerns about the district’s handling of two separate claims of sexual assault carried out by the same male student in 2021. 

As CP previously reported in December, a special grand jury indicted former LCPS Superintendent Scott Ziegler and the school system’s public information officer Wayde Byard following an investigation that found the district lied to parents about the alleged sexual assaults.

The indictment came after the Loudoun County School Board voted to fire Ziegler following the grand jury report’s conclusion that district leaders were “looking out for their own best interests” in their responses to the sexual assaults. 

During a June 2021 school board meeting, Ziegler told parents concerned about a transgender bathroom policy that would allow students to enter opposite-sex bathrooms that “we don’t have any records of assaults occurring in our restrooms.” The grand jury wrote in the report that the superintendent’s statement was a “bald-faced lie.” 

The board ultimately approved Policy 8040 in August 2021, three months after the first sexual assault incident. 

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