Southern Poverty Law Center Urges Lawmakers To Boycott Values Voter Summit

By Janie Amaya

Mark Potok, the Director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, gave a news conference Friday urging public figures to boycott this weekends Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., saying sponsors of the event continue to disgrace the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

“What we’re trying to do is bring attention to the fact that both the host of this Values Voter Summit  of the Family Research Council, and one of it’s major co-sponsors, an organization called the American Family Association, regularly lie about (LGBT) people in this country,” Potok told TRNS.

He said these organization don’t simply disagree with homosexuality but rather say things, that he explained, are entirely wrong according to researchers at the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association.

“Probably the best single example of that is the claim, which these groups repeatedly make, that gay men molest children at rates vastly higher than their heterosexual counterparts,” Potok said.

Potok added that this kind of rhetoric creates an atmosphere in which violence is inevitable in the LGBT community making it the most targeted group for hate violence.

“Public officials ought not to legitimize these groups,” Potok said.