On Tuesday evening, Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave a speech to the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal group dedicated to protecting religious liberty. A lawyer that works with the organization, David Cortman, recently represented Trinity Lutheran in its case before the Supreme Court regarding state laws that bar churches from receiving public funds for non-religious activities. The court ruled 7-2 in favor of the church, which sought a grant to pay for rubberized playground surfaces.
ADF is currently representing a handful of other high-profile religious liberty clients, including Jack Phillips, a baker who ran afoul of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission refusing to bake cakes for a gay wedding in violation of his Christian beliefs. The Supreme Court recently announced it was taking up Phillips’s case. In Washington state the ADF is representing florist Baronelle Stutzman, who served a client faithfully for nine years before refusing to provide flowers for his wedding. The ACLU is currently suing the septuagenarian grandmother for her personal assets. The group is also representing a black fire chief who lost his job after passing out to co-workers a faith-based book that he wrote and self-published, a doctor who doesn’t want to participate in assisted suicide, and crisis pregnancy centers who are required to provide clients abortion information.
Nonetheless, both ABC News and NBC News reported on Sessions speech yesterday by noting in headlines that Sessions gave a speech to a “hate group.” According to ABC, “Jeff Sessions addresses ‘anti-LGBT hate group,’ but DOJ won’t release his remarks.” NBC reported, “Attorney General Jeff Sessions Criticized for Speaking to ‘Hate Group’.”
The hate group designation of ADF comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has been widely criticized in recent years for labeling mainstream conservative and religious organizations as ‘hate groups’ without justification. In recent years, the FBI has distanced itself from the SPLC, due to the egregious politicization. In 2012, a gay activist shot a security guard at the offices of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. The shooter targeted the Family Research Council after locating the the organization on the SPLC’s “hate map.”
THE WEEKLY STANDARD was present for Sessions’s speech Tuesday. In addressing the alleged ‘hate group,’ Sessions quoted liberal Catholic historian Gary Wills and spent significant portions of the speech discussing the positive example of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
