After some violent ‘left-wing’ asshole shoots a guard at the Family Research Council, brave Dana Milbank thinks everything over. He cuts through the reeds of confusion and partisanship (just listen to us: “He’s one of ours! Let him go!”), and he issues as surprisingly sage a tract as any villager ever wrote:

Hateful speech on hate groups
By Dana Milbank, August 16

Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights organization, posted an alert on its blog Tuesday: “Paul Ryan Speaking at Hate Group’s Annual Conference.”

The “hate group” that the Republicans’ vice presidential candidate would be addressing? The Family Research Council, a mainstream conservative think tank founded by James Dobson and run for many years by Gary Bauer.

You see where this is going.

Human Rights Campaign isn’t responsible for the shooting. Neither should the organization that deemed the FRC a “hate group,” the Southern Poverty Law Center, be blamed for a madman’s act. But both are reckless in labeling as a “hate group” a policy shop that advocates for a full range of conservative Christian positions, on issues from stem cells to euthanasia.

Let’s not play around. Okay?

1.) It’s okay to “hate” a hate group. Grow up, Dana.

2.) The Family Research Council is a hate group. They may advocate on a “full range” of issues, but their bread and butter, the advocacy that garners them the most kudos, attention and cash, is their raving, lying hatred for gay American men and women. They are nasty, immoral homophobes.

How do we know this? The FRC’s own words and deeds. But let’s not gloss over the charge (as Dana does), let’s instead put it to a test. Dana and the SPLC disagree, but who should win the argument? Has the “think tank” earned the hate group designation? Here’s the SPLC’s argument:

In Its Own Words

“Gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.”
— Robert Knight, FRC director of cultural studies, and Frank York, 1999

“[Homosexuality] … embodies a deep-seated hatred against true religion.”
— Steven Schwalm, FRC senior writer and analyst, in “Desecrating Corpus Christi,” 1999

“One of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order.”
-1999 FRC pamphlet, Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex with Boys.

“[T]he evidence indicates that disproportionate numbers of gay men seek adolescent males or boys as sexual partners.”
— Timothy Dailey, senior research fellow, “Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse,” 2002

“While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”
— FRC President Tony Perkins, FRC website, 2010

They add:

Other anti-gay propagandists at the FRC include Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies, who joined the organization in 2001. Sprigg authored a 2010 brochure touting “The Top Ten Myths about Homosexuality.” In the brochure, Sprigg claimed that ex-gay therapy works, that sexual orientation can change, that gay people are mentally ill simply because homosexuality makes them that way, and that, “Sexual abuse of boys by adult men is many times more common than consensual sex between adult men, and most of those engaging in such molestation identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual.” . .

In March 2008, Sprigg responded to a question about uniting gay partners during immigration by saying, “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than import them.” He later apologized, but in February 2009, he told Chris Matthews, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.” “So we should outlaw gay behavior?” Matthews asked. “Yes,” Sprigg replied.

Okay. Now let’s see what the other side has to say. Dana?

The Family Research Council [is] a mainstream conservative think tank founded by James Dobson and run for many years by Gary Bauer.

Who wins the argument? The SPLC calls the FRC a hate group for routinely saying homosexuals are mentally ill, conspiracists, pedophiles, and asking they be criminalized and exported from the country. Dana calls the FRC “mainstream” for what peculiar reason, again? Because James Dobson and Gary Bauer are familiar to him.

It’s these lazy calculations that render the villagers pathetic. They learned long ago that ethics present a serious impediment to maintaining a lucrative beat within the dreamy beltway. Somehow the practical result isn’t a soul-free mercenary, it’s a sophisticated journalist who can’t, golly god knows why, construct the flimsiest of arguments.

It would be one thing to ply your gutless profession and manage to cash the paychecks without whining. But when you see fit to lecture the rest of us about the dangerous rhetoric of morality (these people are immoral, Dana), you are one stupid asshole.