I Say, "Let's Mix It Up."

The "Mix It Up at Lunch Day" was an initiative the Southern Poverty Law Center began promoting 11 years ago as a way to break up cliques and stop bullying in schools. It promotes such radical actions for students as hanging out with someone they might not normally speak to.

Thanks to the conservative evangelical group, the American Family Association, this program has been exposed for what it really is, "a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools." They are urging parents with children in the 2500 schools nationwide that participate in the program to keep their children at home on that day.

There is a back story:

The SPLC recently added the American Family Association to its national list of active hate groups, which also includes neo-Nazis, black separatists and Holocaust deniers.

In response, the AFA has charged that the law center is a hate group "for oppressing Christian students and claiming its aim is to shut down groups that oppose homosexuality."

Now, anyone who is familiar with the history of the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the most admirable non-profit organizations in the country, will find it absurd to go to the AFA website and find that the SPLC is described as "a homosexual activist group."

The purpose of the SPLC is accurately described in their on-line mission statement:

The Southern Poverty Law Center is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. Using litigation, education and other forms of advocacy, we work toward the day when the ideals of equal justice and equal opportunity will be a reality. 

We employ a three-pronged strategy to battle racial and social injustice:

• We track the activities of hate groups and domestic terrorists across America, and we launch innovative lawsuits that seek to destroy networks of radical extremists.

• We use the courts and other forms of advocacy to win systemic reforms on behalf of victims of bigotry and discrimination.

• We provide educators with free resources that teach school children to reject hate, embrace diversity and respect differences.

It would be generous to consider the American Family Association (and similar groups) as well-meaning but misguided. Still, it is hard not to see the people at their head as completely unprincipled opportunists who have found an easy way to earn money from ignorant true believers.

To paraphrase Barry Goldwater, who quite literally became something of a gay rights activist in his last years, I don't understand why these so-called Christian groups get so worked up over homosexuality, when there are so many other sins that don't seem to bother them at all.