Color me Impressed

Much to my amazement, Cybercast News Service did a reasonably fair job of recapitulating the recent Intelligence Report from the Southern Poverty Law Center cover story on the Christian Far Right's "Holy War" on homosexuality. The writer of course emphasizes these Religious Righties groups' reaction to the SPLC report, but also represents the conclusions of the SPLC fairly well. Take a look

A civil rights organization that has spent the last 25 years monitoring "hate groups" and "extremists" such as the Ku Klux Klan now has a new target -- the religious right -- which the group claims is conducting a "holy war" against homosexuals.

In the current issue of its quarterly magazine "Intelligence Report," the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) contends that "religious leaders have engaged in 30 years of name-calling and bogus 'science' in their attack on gays. But only now is their crusade reaching biblical proportions."

In response, the spokesman for one pro-family group said it's the SPLC that is guilty of "engaging in hate speech." Another conservative said his group wears the criticism from the SPLC as a "badge of honor." Along with an article on "Curious Cures" for homosexuality and a feature on the myth that homosexuals helped mastermind the Holocaust, the SPLC's latest Intelligence Report contains a timeline of the "anti-gay movement" from Anita Bryant's efforts to repeal a "gay rights" ordinance in Florida in 1977 to the present.

In an editorial, SPLC spokesman Mark Potok asserted that "the religiously based crusade against homosexuals in America" reached a turning point in 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas decision struck down state anti-sodomy laws.