Last month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Liberty Counsel, an anti-LGBTQ Religious Right organization, against GuideStar, a charity information website, after GuideStar began including information about groups that have been designated as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center in its listings.
As one of the organizations that has been labeled an anti-gay hate group by the SPLC, Liberty Counsel said that GuideStar’s decision to include this information on its website was “reckless” and “defamatory” and filed suit. Discussing the court’s dismissal of the suit on the “Faith and Freedom” radio program today, Liberty Counsel’s founder and chairman Mat Staver said that GuideStar’s move to include the SPLC’s “hate group” designation was akin to the Nazis requiring Jews to wear a yellow Star of David.
Staver complained that GuideStar has gone from “a neutral entity” to a left-wing “political activist organization” under its president, Jacob Harold.
“Because of his liberal political activism, he decided to partner with the SPLC and slap these labels on [organizations],” Staver said. “You have to ask yourself, why did he do it? Why was he trying to do it? What was his motivation? It’s very clear what his motivation was. His motivation in terms of what he said, what they did, how they did it is to harm these nonprofits, to put, essentially, if you will, a Star of David on them like the Nazis did to the Jews. Wanted to isolate them, identify them, and ultimately economically boycott them.”
