Last month, David Barton spoke at a Christian men’s conference called “Testing of the Bulls,” where he falsely claimed that his WallBuilders organization has been designated as a hate group by the FBI for opposing gay marriage.
“In this culture, in this day,” Barton said, “if you speak out, you will be attacked. There is no question about it. The other side has found one of the greatest political tools that exists is being able to harass you for what you believe and what you say, so we don’t want to say certain things.”
Barton then once again repeated his false claim that a nondiscrimination ordinance passed in San Antonio, Texas, fines Christians who oppose marriage equality $500 a day and prohibits them from serving in public office, before claiming that he’s now been tagged as a hate group by the FBI.
“Look me up,” he said. “The FBI has got me on their site. I’m one of the hate groups in America. They just came out with a new list for this year, I’m on the list as a hate group because I think marriage should be between a man and a woman.”
For some reason, that elicited a rousing round of applause from the audience as Barton then claimed that “they use my name at military briefings when they talk about domestic terrorists.”
None of this, of course, is true. Barton was merely once listed as one of “30 new activists heading up the Religious Right” in a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center but has somehow managed to spin that out into a claim that he’s been labeled a domestic terrorist by the federal government.
