Oh my it looks like it won’t just be small bakeries that get their first amendment rights trounced in this brave new world we find ourselves in. A christian group has sued Amazon, the SPLC and Charity Guidestar over false and misleading labeling as a hate group.
On Tuesday, D. James Kennedy Ministries (DJKM) filed a lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the charity navigation organization GuideStar, and Amazon for defamation, religious discrimination, and trafficking in falsehood. The SPLC listed DJKM as a “hate group,” while GuideStar also categorized it in those terms, and Amazon kept the ministry off of its charity donation program, Amazon Smile.
“We embarked today on a journey to right a terrible wrong,” Dr. Frank Wright, president and CEO at DJKM, said in a statement Tuesday. “Those who knowingly label Christian ministries as ‘hate’ groups, solely for subscribing to the historic Christian faith, are either woefully uninformed or willfully deceitful. In the case of the Southern Poverty Law Center, our lawsuit alleges the latter.”
The SPLC has labeled DJKM an “anti-LGBT hate group” for its opposition to same-sex marriage and transgenderism. “These false and illegal characterizations have a chilling effect on the free exercise of religion and on religious free speech for all people of faith,” Wright declared.
“The basis for SPLC’s declaration that the Ministry is a hate group is that the Ministry espouses and supports Biblical morals and principles concerning human sexuality,” DJKM maintained.
What’s more according to the complaint
“Because the Amazon Defendants are operating a public accommodation(s), it is a violation of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically 42 U.S.C. § 2000(a), for the Amazon Defendants to deny the Ministry the privileges and advantages of the AmazonSmile program on the basis of the Ministry’s religion and the beliefs that are inherent to that religion.”
They have a cause of action under the Civil Rights Act. It’s going to be an interesting thing to see if a court can actually rule a business’s dislike of religion trumps, freedom of religion and law explicitly written to prevent businesses from discriminating on the basis of religion.
Not a lawyer but this is looking very nice. The ministry has suffered actual damages from not being able to participate in Amazon’s charity program, it has also been defamed by the SPLC and everyone that has spread their list of hate groups. With any luck this will have the SPLC focused back on actual hate groups, and may make some larger corporations think twice about having gotten in bed with the vengeful LGBTetc people.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member