(LifeSiteNews) — A Republican Congressman grilled the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) CEO on Wednesday for putting the parental rights organization Moms for Liberty on their “hate group” list.
Asked by Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin during a House Judiciary Committee hearing why the SPLC designates Moms for Liberty as a hate group, CEO Bryan Fair said it “is an organization that advocates against school curricular inclusion” and “opposes LGBTQ rights.”
“When you use the term inclusion, does that include gender mutilation? Because that’s part of what they oppose, is when you have minors as young as kindergarten … where they’re teaching them that gender mutilation is OK. Is that inclusion in your book?” Tiffany asked.
“They oppose the teaching about race, about sexual identity. They seek to ban books,” Fair said without specifying what kind of books the group seeks to keep out of children’s libraries. Moms for Liberty flags so-called children’s books that have adult content, including sex, depictions of nudity, profanity, drug use, and violence.
“So if that book included gender mutilation is a good thing, that we should allow minors to be able to do that?” Tiffany replied.
“You’re saying that what I’m saying that’s a bad thing. I’m saying that Moms for Liberty is listed on our hate map because it demeans and vilifies people based on their immutable characteristics. It engages in various kinds of conspiracy theories. It seeks to whitewash our history, to exclude certain subjects from our public schools,” Fair claimed.
“I’m a parent, too, and I want my children to learn about the history of this country. I want them to learn about racism. I want them to learn about hate and the expression of hate in this country,” Fair continued.
Moms for Liberty takes issue, more precisely, with critical race theory (CRT), which they view as a divisive and racist teaching practice. CRT holds that race is “used to oppress and exploit people of color,” and often teaches that whites are either consciously or unconsciously racist.
Critics often complain that CRT teaches people to view the world through the lens of race and ultimately creates the very tension that it claims to remediate.
Tiffany assured Fair that Moms for Liberty is not a racist organization, adding that he has spent time with them. He argued that their focus is teaching “family values and parental rights.”
Moms for Liberty began as a small parental rights organization in Florida in 2021 but exploded into a 300-chapter juggernaut with over 130,000 members, campaigning successfully to put parental rights advocates on school boards and pass policies removing sexually explicit materials for schools.