Moms for Liberty, a parental rights advocacy group that gained national prominence pushing back against pandemic restrictions and radical sex and gender indoctrination in public schools, has become a target for attacks after being labelled as an extremist movement, its co-founder said.
Each year, the SPLC publishes a report on what it calls “hate groups.” In its “Year in Hate & Extremism 2022” report released this June, the SPLC described Moms for Liberty as a group consisting of “far-right anti-government parents” seeking to advance their “reactionary anti-student inclusion” agenda.
However, according to Ms. Justice, not only is Moms for Liberty not a hate group, but such a designation has put her group itself at the receiving end of hatred.
“[We’re receiving] death threats, numerous death threats,” she told host Joshua Philipp. “We received a message saying that they hoped our husbands would rape our children, that we would be force-fed hot lead. ‘We’ve cut the brakes on your tires, we know where you live, and your children are not safe.’ The things that people have said are atrocious and vile and disgusting.”
“I have to imagine that that was the point of what the SPLC did: to make us almost seem not human, not real people,” she added.
To justify the characterization of Moms for Liberty as a hate group, the SPLC compares it to parent groups fighting against the 1954 Supreme Court decision that ended racial segregation in public schools. The idea is that today’s parents who don’t want their young children be exposed to sexually explicit material at school are just as “anti-inclusive” and reprehensible as those who resisted racially integrated public education.
“Regardless of the time period, most attacks against public education have been reactionary and rooted in racism, from the fight against integration after Brown v. Board, to the so-called school choice movement, to the latest attacks on inclusive education,” the SPLC report reads. “A consistent tactic has been the attempt to ban books from classrooms and libraries based on what these groups deem inappropriate because the content addresses race, LGBTQ issues and gender.”
Ms. Justice dismissed the accusations about removing certain books from schools. “There’s no room for compromise when it comes to the innocence and the safety of our children,” she said.
“Curating the content of a children’s library isn’t banning books,” the school board member-turned parental rights advocate said. “We’re talking about children. We’re talking about a public school library, a limited amount of space where all of the books should be supporting the curriculum and the standards that the children are being taught. What we’ve seen is some very exceptionally explicit pornographic content that has been found in these libraries.”
“The internet is filtered for kids [in schools]. The school district decides certain websites aren’t allowed,” she continued. “Obviously, everyone understands that there’s a degree of age appropriateness for children in school.”
In response to the SPLC’s claim that Moms for Liberty is made of parents who are “anti-government,” Ms. Justice shrugged the accusation off as “laughable.”
“Is just laughable considering the fact that we engage in government and encourage people to run for office all over the country. We are proud to say we had 275 people elected to public office last year,” she told Mr. Philipp. “So it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
While being called a “hate group” by the SPLC has so far not resulted in any actual violence against Moms for Liberty, it doesn’t mean the group’s members are not at risk, Ms. Justice warned.
“Watching what happened with the Family Research Council and the target that was put on their backs by the SPLC designation and violence ensuing from there, I think it’s very concerning and incredibly irresponsible for the SPLC, or for the American government, to put a target on the backs of American moms and dads,” Ms. Justice said, pointing to the now-notorious “domestic terrorist” letter, which has been revealed to be drafted at the request of the Biden administration.
“You put a target on our backs and our moms and dads don’t deserve that. We do our best every day to be good American citizens and to raise our children with kindness and compassion for all people,” she added. “We want a retraction and an apology and we’re going to work to get it.”
“We are normal everyday moms and dads with children and lives. We love our country, and we are very worried about what the future of America is going to look like if this type of vilification of American citizens for speaking their mind and exercising free speech continues.”
