The SPLC Says We’re ‘Haters.’ We Love Them Anyway.

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The Southern Poverty Law Center recently updated its “Hate Map” to include Focus on the Family on its list of hundreds of “hate” organizations alongside racist and white supremacist groups.

In particular, the SPLC cites Focus’s online publication, the Daily Citizen, as one of its primary offenders. According to the organization, we “demonize LGBTQ+ people, claiming they are unnatural and un-Christian.” We also “promote anti-trans pseudoscience, such as conversion therapy.”

But as the old proverb says, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.”

Our Side

Let’s address the SPLC’s primary allegations. First, we don’t demonize anyone – whether they identify as homosexual or transgender, or even if they work for or donate to the SPLC. In fact, as a Christian organization, our faith obliges us to love and pray for our enemies (Romans 12:14). That’s exactly what we do.

Furthermore, we affirm that God created human beings in His very image and likeness (Genesis 1:20). So, every person – including those who disagree with us over our Christian beliefs about human sexuality or call us “haters” – has inestimable worth and dignity bestowed upon them by God Himself. And we treat all people accordingly.

As Christians, we follow the example of Christ, who blessed those who hated Him and forgave those who crucified Him (Luke 23:23).

Second, the SPLC attacks us for promoting “anti-trans pseudoscience.” Why? Because we believe individuals struggling with homosexuality and transgenderism should be able to receive counseling and talk therapy to help them live according to their own goals and values.

To be clear, it’s the SPLC – not Focus on the Family – that is on the side of “pseudoscience.”

Real Science

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services just released a comprehensive review of the evidence and best practices for those struggling with gender dysphoria, revealing “serious concerns about medical interventions, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries, that attempt to transition children and adolescents away from their sex.”

It’s the SPLC that should quit supporting “conversion therapy,” like harmful and irreversible drugs, hormones, and surgeries, and embrace scientific reality.

Furthermore, if you read the SPLC’s report – and I suggest you do, since it highlights some of our best work – you’d have no idea that ministering to individuals and families dealing with homosexuality and transgenderism is just a small piece of what we do.

Helpers, Not Haters

Last year, we helped more than two million families who reached out to us for support. We helped 140,000 married couples experiencing a crisis in their marriage. We helped 290,000 people place their faith in Christ. And over the past two decades, we’ve helped save the lives of more than 500,000 preborn children through our Option Ultrasound ministry.

Through our Wait No More program, we encourage Christian families to get engaged in the foster care system to help children in need. We provide families with an award-winning audio drama, Adventures in Odyssey, to teach kids biblical values and help grow their Christian faith. We provide Hope Restored intensives for couples on the brink of divorce, helping thousands of couples save their marriages and families, with an 80% success rate.

We provide tens of thousands of individuals with a free one-time counseling consultation, helping them through myriad issues – from marital conflict to anxiety and depression, pornography addiction, and more. We help prevent teen suicide through our Alive to Thrive program. And last year, we empowered more than 1.2 million Christians to live out their faith through Bring Your Bible Day.

Yes, we at Focus will continue to speak out strongly on what we believe is biblical truth – human beings are sexually dimorphic, male or female, and one’s sex can never change. We won’t shrink back or shy away from that.

If saving marriages, saving babies, and helping foster children qualifies us as “haters,” then so be it.

But please know that if someone from the SPLC stops by our campus, we won’t shout them down, lock them out, or call them “hateful.” We’ll greet them with a smile and, if given the chance, share our love for them as people made in God’s image. Because that’s exactly what our faith asks us to do.

Jim Daly is president of Focus on the Family.