By L.A. Williams, Correspondent
Christian Action League
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Dr. Patrick Wooden, senior pastor of Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, was among a group of pastors and ministry leaders who gathered in Montgomery on Tuesday to challenge the Southern Poverty Law Center to stop attaching its “hate group” label to Christian organizations that hold fast to God’s truth.
“It breaks my heart that a time-honored Civil Rights organization that has done so much good would, for whatever reason, whether it is for financial considerations or whatever, buy into this lie,” the Rev. Wooden told Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality during an interview about Tuesday’s event.
“For any Civil Rights organization to label any other group a hate group because they are pro-family, because they believe in the model that the God of the Bible designed and introduced, it is sad; and they are wrong.”
AFTAH is one of a number of organizations recently labeled as “hate groups” by SPLC. Others include Abiding Truth Ministries, American Family Association and Family Research Council.
The Southern Poverty Law Center insists that it does not bestow its “hate group” status on organizations simply because they view homosexuality as unbiblical, but bases its lists on “propagation of known falsehoods … and repeated, groundless name-calling.” But Wooden warned that the organization will lose credibility by trying to equate the homosexual agenda with civil rights.
His message to SPLC employees: “Please do not discredit yourself and all of the other good people who have served down through the years fighting a just cause by now taking up a cause that is immoral, misguided.”
Wooden told One News Now that he doesn’t want SPLC to say to African-Americans that practicing homosexuality is “like being black,” and have pastors “stand idly by and African-Americans not hear from the ministers who have a different point of view.”
In an AFTAH interview he said every African-American ought to be appalled, ought to be angry, should began to wave their fists in the air and declare black power and say to the homosexual lobbyists that they shouldn’t compare their self-destructive lifestyle to the black man’s beautiful skin color.
