WASHINGTON—Heritage Foundation President Dr. Kevin Roberts released the following statement Wednesday in response to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s decision to label parental rights organizations as “hate groups” synonymous with the Ku Klux Klan. 

“The Southern Poverty Law Center has contemptibly labeled groups that defend children from sterilization and mutilation as so-called hate groups. It is a despicable move.

 

“Our family members, friends, and neighbors are the people who work and volunteer at Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education, and the others whom the SPLC smeared. They are not hateful. They are patriotic parents concerned about the education of their children. 

 

“The SPLC’s ‘hate map’ is itself a weapon, used by activists and actual domestic terrorists to attack family focused organizations as history as shown (or as we saw with Family Research Council in 2012).

 

“We can surmise why the SPLC continues to do this. The groups it smears are succeeding in their mission to save children from the scourge of toxic sexual and racial ideology. The SPLC will do whatever it can to defeat them, even if it risks the lives of anyone who dares challenge its woke orthodoxy.

 

“But the SPLC’s shameless tactics will not work. We and our brave allies will not cower. We will not yield. We will expose them. And we will win.”