The Southern Poverty Law Center has updated its list of designated hate groups, and this year is significant in that some of the larger anti-gay outfits have made the cut. After a litany of ever more extreme statements from people such as Peter Sprigg and Tony Perkins of the FRC, Bryan Fischer of the AFA and Laurie Higgins of the IFI, the SPLC has determined that these groups all deserve to be designated as having gone beyond mere advocacy, and into full-blown hatred against the LGBT community. Especially after the recent spate of gay teen suicides elicited no remorse from any of these institutions, they have indeed earned their place in the halls of hate.
It is notable that Focus on the Family is not on the list. Though we at Truth Wins Out still stand in solid opposition to Focus’s mission, they have indeed made baby steps in the past year to moderate their message, which is in stark contrast with the growing extremism at FRC and AFA. Higgins and the IFI have always been awful, of course. These groups especially deserve recognition for their abject ignorance of facts and reality, choosing as they do to spread anti-gay propaganda at all costs, which indeed suggests that their “work” is inspired by little more than juvenile animus.
The list of anti-gay hate groups now includes the following:
1. Abiding Truth Ministries [Scott Lively]
2. American Family Association
3. Americans for Truth About Homosexuality [Peter LaBarbera]
4. American Vision
5. Chalcedon Foundation
6. Dove World Outreach Center [Terry Jones]
7. Faithful Word Baptist Church [Steven Anderson]
8. Family Research Council
9. Family Research Institute [Paul Cameron]
10. Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment
11. Illinois Family Institute
12. MassResistance
13. Traditional Values Coalition
There is no question that inside-outside strategies are going to be needed to assure that President Obama's "Deficit Commission" does balance the federal accounts on the backs of working Americans.
Progressive members of the House and Senate are going to need to say "no" with a level of commitment and consistency that many of them failed to display during the fights over health-care and financial-services reform. Activist groups are going to need to pressure Congress in smart and effective ways.
Senator Bernie Sanders [1], I-Vermont, gets this.
An organizer before he was elected mayor of Burlington, congressman and senator,Sanders has taken the lead [2] in pulling together a muscular inside-outside coalition of members of Congress, labor unions, seniors citizen organizations and others to present and fight for progressive alternatives to the proposal that National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to address the deficit by making major cuts in programs that are essential for seniors, college students, working families and vulnerable Americans.
"It is no surprise that these two favor draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the needs of our veterans, and education while proposing tax reductions for the wealthy and large profitable corporations," says Sanders, whose office describes former Wyoming Senator Simpson as "a darling of the Republican right wing" and former Clinton White House chief of staff Bowles as "a former investment banker who made a fortune on Wall Street."
The Vermont independent's view recognizes that deficits have mushroomed not because of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid but because of "two unpaid wars, tax breaks for the wealthy, a Medicare prescription drug bill written by the pharmaceutical industry, and the Wall Street bailout."
"Everyone agrees that over the long-term we have got to reduce the record-breaking $13.7 trillion national debt and unsustainable federal deficit," the senator says. "The national debt is a very serious issue and we’ve got to tackle it, but we can do it without balancing the budget on the backs of middle-class families."
To that end, Sanders has invited progressive activists and economists to meet next week in Washington to develop a progressive plan to cut the deficit. "We all know that there are a number of fair ways to reduce deficits without harming the middle class and those who have already lost their jobs, homes, life savings and ability to send their kids to college," he says. "The time has come to put these proposals into a package so that a fair and progressive deficit reduction plan will become part of the national discussion."
Where would Sanders begin?
1. End Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.
2. Stop funnding expensive and outdated Cold War-era Pentagon programs.
3. Eliminate tax credits for big oil companies that have posted the highest profits in history.
Sounds like the start of a plan.
It won't stop there, of course.
But the Sanders approach illustrates a fundamental reality: It is possible to restore fiscal responsibility without stealing from working Americans, forcing them to retire later and undermining their health-care benefits.
That's a message progressives need to deliver. And Sanders is exactly right when he argues that, with smart inside-outside strategies, this debate can be steered in the right -- make that the left -- direction.
Links:
[1] http://sanders.senate.gov/
[2] http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=e601c2f8-ff96-4982-93f8-f27b7ab2560f
