The Southern Poverty Law Center purports to be an organization that, according to its website, fights hate, teaches tolerance and seeks justice.
The organization is so tolerant that in its Extremist Files it lists the Family Research Council because the group believes in traditional marriage, and it puts the Tea Party Nation on its Hate Map for "general hate."
The Southern Poverty Law Center also has listed the American Family Association, an organization that has a history of promoting the sanctity of human life, decency and morality, as a hate group.
Many groups on the organization's various lists truly promote hate and intolerance, while others don't espouse the same social values as the organization or differ from it politically. As such, their listing alongside groups that espouse pure evil only makes a mockery of such lists.
But now the American Family Association has jumped into the mud with the Southern Poverty Law Center. It recently unveiled its own online bigotry map (www.afa.net/bigotrymap).
The map identifies more than 200 groups and organizations that openly display bigotry toward, or are deeply intolerant of, the Christian faith.
The country, of course, is increasingly full of organizations that show animosity toward Christians. Some people have even argued, given various court decisions and directives, that those organizations include the United States government itself.
Today, because many Christians believe in traditional marriage, public prayer and open Bible reading, tenets of their faith for 2,000 years, they are labeled bigoted and intolerant.
Elsewhere, anti-Christian groups demand prayer be removed from various bodies where it has been an institution, insist owners not make decisions about their businesses based on their religious beliefs and threaten action if long placed icons are not removed.
But the American Family Association, with its action, proves itself no better than such haters.
Its map's four national groups are the Human Rights Campaign, which it terms "the nation's largest homosexual organization in America," Gilsen, which "infiltrates public schools with pro-homosexual indoctrination tactics," the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which "threatens, intimidates and sues local governments and public schools to abolish all public references to the Christian faith" and, naturally, the Southern Law Poverty Center.
Groups in the various states are categorized as atheist, humanist, anti-Christian or homosexual agenda.
In Tennessee, only four groups are listed. The Memphis Freethought Alliance, Nashville Secular Life, and Rationalists of East Tennessee are tagged as humanist groups, and Americans United is labeled an anti-Christian group. None are listed in Chattanooga.
Outside the Scenic City, the closest groups listed as bigoted are the University of Alabama in Huntsville Non-Theists, the Marshall County (Ala.) Atheists and Agnostics, and the Kennesaw State University Student Coalition for Inquiry in Kennesaw, Ga.
Undoubtedly, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's Spectrum (gay-straight alliance), Chattanooga Organized for Action and local wiccan groups are breathing a sigh of relief they didn't find their way onto the list. Or maybe they would consider it a badge of honor to be on such a list.
It's unfortunate that organizations, be they Christian, non-Christian, Democrat, Republican, gay, straight, rich, poor, black or white, must divide people with labels.
No organization that claims that it "teaches tolerance" would do that, and neither would one that considers itself "pro-family."
Jesus Christ, who both taught tolerance and was pro family, talked about labeling others fairly plainly: "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you" (Matthew 7:1-2).
Similarly, in James 4:11-12, it says, "Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?"
If we all followed what Jesus called "a new commandment" -- "as I have loved you, that you also love one another" -- we wouldn't need such labels, or hate maps or bigotry maps.
Simplistic, yes, but worth the effort.