Parental Rights Groups Respond to Southern Poverty Law Center ‘Hate’ Designation

A sign reading 'We Do Not Co-Parent with the Government' is seen in the hallway during the inaugural Moms For Liberty Summit in Tampa, Fla., on July 15, 2022. Photo by Octavio Jones/Getty Images

Parental rights organizations, many with chapters in Virginia, responded to The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), labeling them “hate” and “extremist group.” Groups including Parents Rights in Education, Moms For Liberty, and Parents Against CRT were all on the SPLC’s new hate map.

Suzanne Gallagher, national executive director of Parents Rights in Education, told The Epoch Times that her organization is in the process of finding a law firm to sue SPLC.

“We’ve contacted American First Legal, Liberty Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom, Vernadette Broyles’ Child, and Parental Rights Campaign, and Pacific Justice Institute,” Gallagher told The Epoch Times in a recent interview. “We have reached out to them and stated that we would like to sue the SPLC if there is any possibility of bringing them to justice.”

Despite SPLC’s effort to discredit them, Gallagher said that the “hate” designation by SPLC has had a positive effect of increasing their visibility and membership, with their Twitter account getting millions more hits.

“These are numbers that we’re not used to,” said Gallagher.

The Southern Poverty Law Center headquarters in Montgomery, Ala., in June 2019. Google Maps/Screenshot via The Epoch Times

SPLC Spreads Hate

The SPLC is registered as a nonprofit civil rights litigation and advocacy organization that also runs a website purporting to track extremist activity within the U.S., documenting these extremist group labels on its “Hate Map” web portal.

Parental rights groups are lumped in with ideologies and rhetoric from anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim, antisemitism, or male supremacy to neo-Confederacy, neo-Nazi, neo-Völkisch, and white nationalism.

Gallagher said the SPLC is, itself, spreading hate toward parents, and the left is spreading hate through the school indoctrination of the children, teaching them to be activists.

“This is our government, who is advancing the agenda of the SPLC, literally, in our public school system K-12,” said Gallagher.

“Where are these kids getting this idea that they have rights and that they should be out in the streets being activated politically? They can’t vote. These, again, are minors. They are being politicized in the K-12 public school system,” said Gallagher.

She said children are being taught to see their families as the enemy and the school as their safe haven.

“Their two main themes. The first is, don’t listen to your parents. You are the only one who can decide what your identity is,” said Gallagher. And “they’re also taught to hate their country.”

Gallagher said the SPLC and the school system is promoting hate toward straight children by supporting and treating transgender students as a protected class and the victims of assaults as criminal.

Meanwhile, ex-FBI agent and MSNBC contributor Frank Figliuzzi praised the SPLC’s recent report as “extremely comprehensive” in listing groups that spread hate. The ex-FBI agent compared the parental rights groups to the KKK and claimed that parents are spreading hate.

“So, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this going local [and the] mainstreaming of hatred. We’ve seen it before, and we’ve seen it now with people who truly are driven by hate and deception running for school board,” said Figiiuzzi. “The overall takeaway is that hate is becoming more entrenched. They have gotten local.”

Gallagher, however, condemned violence and vitriol from any group, whether on the right or left and said its attacks should be denounced and vitriol is counterproductive to changing hearts and minds on important issues.

Leading the Way

Gallagher has been an advocate for parental rights and child safety since the 90s, trying to stop the teaching of sex education curriculum on AIDS in the K-12 Oregon Public Schools.  She ran for State House and lost because a large amount of money was poured into her opponent’s campaign, and at that, time not too many parents paid attention to the sexualization of kids, she said.

Gallagher helped launch Parents Rights in Education in 2009 but didn’t step in as director until 2018.  She said she had seen an increased effort, in the last 50 years, by the public school system to sexualize and undermine the parent-child relationship.

Additionally, the school system has increasingly promoted inappropriate types of sex education and conversations on sexuality in clubs like GSA (Gender Sexuality Alliance), often without parental awareness.

“What I experienced in the early 90s has just escalated dramatically,” said Gallagher.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland delivers remarks during a meeting with U.S. attorneys at the Justice Department in Washington, on June 14, 2023. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Federal Agency Target Parents

SPLC’s attack on parent groups is similar to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) targeting of parent protesters in 2021. After the National School Boards Association (NSBA ) sent a letter to the White House comparing concerned parents to domestic terrorists, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo announcing the DOJ would direct resources to the “rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”

It was revealed that there was a collaboration between the Biden White House and NSBA to draft the language of the letter, which urged the use of federal law enforcement and counterterrorism tools, including the Patriot Act, against parents.

After public push-back, the FBI for forced to rescind the memo, and NSBA withdrew the letter, issuing an apology. However, the parental rights movement has continued to be attacked, and parents maligned, and the SPLC report made clear how the left views parents who do not support their agenda.

Local Groups Weigh In

Army of Parents (AOP), a parental rights group in Virginia started by Loudoun County Public School parent Elicia Brand, called the “hate” label and attack on Mom’s for Liberty ‘baseless’ and said the SPLC has a tendency to attack groups on the right.

“The recent categorization of AOP and other education and parent’s rights groups as ‘hate groups’ is a disheartening misrepresentation of our objectives and values. AOP is dedicated to leaving a legacy of access to world-class education in reading, writing, arithmetic, science, history, and the arts- free from indoctrination, politics, and agendas-to all children,” said Brand in a press statement.

“Further, AOP is committed to advocating for students and families who have been victims of sexual assault in schools and to ensuring girls and women are not erased in definition, importance or role.”

A man holds a signboard at a protest outside Luther Jackson Middle School in Falls Church, Va., before a Fairfax County Public Schools board meeting, on Sept. 15, 2022. Terri Wu/The Epoch Times

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora—Fairfax, Virginia’s chapter leader for the Independent Women’s Forum—also condemned the attacks from SPLC, saying the nonprofit has lost any credibility with this new report.

“There is nothing more loving than standing up to protect our children from indoctrination in public schools. Organizations that call us domestic terrorists or hateful for doing that are pursuing a dangerous agenda and can’t be taken seriously,” Lundquist-Arora told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

A leading parental rights legal organization, Parental Rights Foundation, also denounced the SPLC’s including parent’s rights groups on their hate map.

“There is so much common ground in the area of parental rights, with allies on both sides of the political aisle. It is sad that anyone would use the issue to divide when nothing unites us more than our love for our children,” Michael Ramey, president-elect for the Parental Rights Foundation, told The Epoch Times.

Gallagher said while they pursue the lawsuit against SPLC, her organization is looking at building a coalition with other parent rights groups and is in the process of reaching out to groups, including Moms for Liberty.