18 hate groups tracked in Colorado, 3 locally
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- The Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked 18 hate groups throughout Colorado in their newly-released report: The Year in Hate & Extremism 2021.
Three organizations designated as hate groups in Colorado by the SPLC are based in Colorado Springs or Pueblo. Eight others operate statewide.
Family Research Institute and The Pray in Jesus Name Project are both located in Colorado Springs and have been added to the map for being 'anti-LGBTQ.'
Anti-LGBTQ is classified as "the opposition to LGBTQ rights, often couched in demonizing rhetoric and grounded in harmful pseudoscience that portrays LGBTQ people as threats to children, society, and often public health."
SPLC says Northern Kingdom Prophets, located in Pueblo, has been designated as a group for 'general hate.' General hate is classified as "groups that peddle a combination of well-known hate and conspiracy theories, in addition to unique bigotries that are not easily categorized."
"In the general hate category, that's where we have kind of sort of the catch-all category," said Cassie Miller, a Senior Research Analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center. "It's for those groups that don't fit neatly into a specific ideology and have a lot of overlapping forms of bigotry.”
KRDO reached out to these groups for comment on their designation.
"If it's somehow wrong to think that homosexuality should be suppressed, if it is somehow wrong to say transsexualism is a flat out lie, you just have to use your eyeballs, then I guess we're a hate group," said Dr. Paul Cameron, Head of the Family Research Institute.
Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt with Pray in Jesus Name responded with the following message:
Thank you for your inquiry.
This is not news. Ten years ago the SPLC listed Pray In Jesus Name, and now continues to defame scores of Evangelical Christian groups like ours (and now KRDO defames us) because we stand for traditional marriage between one man and one woman. I believe the Bible, and so does a vast majority of your audience.
Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, PhD
"The SPLC doesn't demonize Christian groups or evangelicals," said Miller. "We have a lot of Christians who work in our organization. But this is about demonizing people because of an immutable characteristic because they are gay or trans, and that is why we list a group like that."
SPLC's new report identified 733 hate and 488 anti-government groups actively operating across the United States. This is a decrease from 838 documented in 2020 and a record-high 1,020 in 2018.
Even though the number of documented active groups has declined for the third year, hate and extremism in America have not diminished, according to the SPLC. They believe far-right extremists are finding haven in online networks.
The internet has become the SPLC's greatest tool in tracking hate groups. But they worry that could change as more extremists get de-platformed from mainstream sites like Facebook or Twitter and move to private, independent outlets.
