Focus on the Family organization lands on extremist ‘hate group’ list
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) - The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights advocacy group, recently added Colorado Springs-based evangelical organization Focus on the Family to an extremist watch list.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Focus on the Family is "an anti-LGBTQ+ extremist group that has long relied on its biblical worldview strategy to push back against LGBTQ+ progress and reproductive rights."
Focus on the Family is an evangelical religious organization based in Colorado Springs. According to their website, their principles include the permanence of marriage, the value of children, the sanctity of human life, and the "value of male and female."
However, SPLC claims that the organization's online publication, Daily Citizen, "demonizes LGBTQ+ people and promotes anti-trans pseudoscience." This is what SPLC says landed Focus on Family on their "HATEWATCH Extremist File,” which the Daily Citizen itself called a Hate Group list.
Glenn T. Stanton, Director of Global Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family, responded to SPLC on the Daily Citizen, seemingly unbothered by this new designation.
He wrote that being on this list means that the organization is "simply contending for the wholly uncontroversial natural order of things in God’s design for human sexuality, the mother/father family founded on marriage, and the objective reality of male and female." He further wrote that they will "continue to do so, undaunted."
SPLC has a page on its website explaining the reasoning for its designation. Jim Daly, President of Focus on the Family, said in response, "Standing for truth isn't hate."
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