Worldwide Christian ministry based in Fort Lauderdale fights 'hate group' label

[TexasTowelie]

D. James Kennedy Ministries, the Christian organization based in Fort Lauderdale and known around the world, will continue to wear an ignominious label: hate group.

The late Rev. D. James Kennedy, who founded the ministries and Coral Ridge Presbyterian mega-church and was one of the most prominent evangelical ministers on television during the 20th Century, was widely known for his opposition to abortion, pornography, fetal stem cell research, teaching of evolution, and same-sex marriage.

The ministries present-day rhetoric on LGBT issues has landed it on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map," along with 75 others in Florida and 1,020 in the U.S. it labels hate groups: organizations of racist skinheads, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, the Ku Klux Klan, black nationalists, followers of the Nation of Islam, New Black Panther Party members, opponents of immigration and Muslims, and Holocaust deniers.

Kennedy Ministries is fighting its inclusion as a hate group, but suffered a setback this week. D. James Kennedy Ministries had sued the Southern Poverty Law Center, claiming it was damaged by the hate-group label. But U.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson, in an order issued Thursday, said the “hate group” assertion is protected by the First Amendment.

Read more: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fort-lauderdale/fl-ne-kennedy-ministries-splc-hate-group-ruling-20190920-yyzvi6zp2rgvzatlkwcgsll37u-story.html
(South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

[Botany]

1. D. James Kennedy and his church spread hate.

From Wiki:

Kennedy was a founding member of the board of Moral Majority, a political movement in the late 1970s and 1980s.

[SWBTATTReg]

3. Thanks for posting this tidbit of news, I did not know this. Moral Majority (or 'My morals (not ...

yours)) group was/is very toxic.

[Botany]

4. The moral majority fought against the spending of money on research and treatment of AIDS

Such wonderful people.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. Hate is a tag that is very hard to erase, once one earns it. And hate groups (along w/ rump)...

are trying to defend their assertions that their speech is protected by the 1st A (in not all cases, does 1st A. step in, w/ regards to hate speech, a commonly accepted fact we all have seen here on DU). They find (Hate Groups such as Kennedy Ministries) that it's hard to change others' impressions of Kennedy Ministries because of (lo and behold, others' 1st Amendment rights!).

It is apparent that Judges do read and apply the constitution and its amendments (so many here on DU are fearful of law being distorted to protect our corrupt president and his cronies). However, I'm not totally convinced that this particular case is totally over, being that I have so little faith in this particular administration in that rump and associated cronies, in viewing this particular case, may view it as a threat to them, and direct Justice Dept resources to fight it (which won't go anywhere IMHO).