Noisy Room
"Months from now, you’ll be reading a story about Jeff Sessions, and there will be a remark to the effect of “when he’s not off speaking to hate groups.”
"And the phrase “speaking to hate groups” will have a hotlink on it. And that hotlink will take you to any number of stories that have appeared in the last day or so since Sessions gave a speech to a group known as the Alliance Defending Freedom.
"The group was in the news recently because of its work in the case of Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, in which the Court held the church did not lose its right to apply for a state grant to pay for an updated playground simply because it was a church.
"Alliance Defending Freedom is representing Jack Phillips, the cake baker who declined to create a cake for a gay wedding and whose case the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear.
"It pushed the case that forced public schools to provide equal access to after-school Bible clubs as to other organizations. And it convinced the Supreme Court to affirm an Arizona tuition tax credit program could be used for any schools parents choose, including those run by churches.
"It got the court to affirm the rights of communities to restrict where sexually oriented businesses could locate. And it was the group behind the Supreme Court ruling upholding the ban on partial-birth abortions.
"One can take issue with any or all these positions. But they are the positions of a Christian group, founded by preachers, that makes grants or provides pro bono attorneys to groups and individuals whose religious rights and rights to free association are threatened. They are not the positions of a hate group.
"So how did this group end up in a thousand headlines proclaiming it a “hate group?” Because the Southern Poverty Law Center said so. And for the left and its handmaidens in the media, that’s all it takes." . . .
