Initial reaction after finding out that Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family made the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of “hate and anti-government extremist” groups for the first time was a tongue-in-cheek, “What took them so long?” 

“Since Focus’ inception 48 years ago in 1977, we’ve had the same six guiding principles that adhere to the teachings of the Bible, three of which are what the Southern Poverty Law Center says is ‘hate,’” said Nicole Hunt, an employment law attorney who also works at Focus as life issues analyst and a spokesperson.

Southern Poverty Law Center did not respond to a request for an interview or to questions submitted to the organization, including why Focus was added to its assessment this year.

The 2024 analysis, released last month, names 1,371 groups and individuals, of which eight have a statewide presence in Colorado and 25 are in local Colorado communities. Nine are located in the southern part of the state.

Focus on the Family President Jim Daly said in a statement that labeling his nonprofit as a hate group is a “dangerous and reckless myth,” and Focus “is not taking the slander lying down.”

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“Their inflammatory rhetoric has incited violence against innocent believers and fanned the very behaviors they claim they wish to combat,” Daly said in his statement. “It would appear that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has championed its faux hate list for years, always finds a way to hate Christians.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971 in Montgomery, Ala., to work on lawsuits related to racial and civil rights issues, started publishing in 1990 a yearly stash of what it defines as hate groups.

The organization flags individuals and groups that it claims “use political, communication, violent and online tactics to build strategies and training infrastructure to divide the country, demoralize people and dismantle democracy.”

Organizations they deem to be related to White supremacy or militia, or opposing illegal immigration and not supporting diversity, equity and inclusion programs, are mentioned as prime targets this year, pinpointed by location on a map of the United States.

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Focus is included for its “anti-LGBTQ+” stance because the organization adheres to biblical beliefs that support traditional marriage between a man and a woman, that God created two immutable genders and that sexual relations outside of a heterosexual union is sinful.

“It really is a faux hate list — just because Christians believe there’s a natural order to marriage and creating families and gender doesn’t make you homophobic or intolerant,” Hunt said. “It’s common-sense beliefs that have stood the test of time for millennia.”

The religious convictions of Focus “make us anti-sin, not anti-anybody,” Daly said.

Focus “strongly rejects the widely discredited, scandal-ridden, racial Southern Poverty Law Center’s careless and threatening ‘hate list’ designation and urges them to do the responsible thing and deescalate their potentially violent rhetoric,” he added.

The list is not to be taken seriously, Hunt said, as it’s apparently become “a fundraising gimmick” for the organization.

“When you throw the word  ‘hate’ around so loosely it loses its meaning,” she said. “It really is a moment in time where a lot of Americans are waking up to the idea that you don’t have to go along with the lie just because it’s easier to go with it.”

And now there’s a counter-hate list that includes Southern Poverty Law Center.

The opposing list launched last year by the conservative watchdog group New Tolerance Campaign “catalogs hate and the promotion of violence on the left,” President Gregory T. Angelo said in a video posted online.

Individuals and groups that the organization says promote calls for violence, antisemitism, LGBTQ+ radicalism and anti-democracy actions are included.

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Angelo said when it was founded, Southern Poverty Law Center’s origins were noble in calling out hate across the nation, as it zeroed in on the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups.

“Unfortunately, over time the Southern Poverty Law Center has become something of a partisan cudgel, a catchall for any and all organizations the Southern Poverty Law Center does not like,” Angelo said, mentioning that presidential candidate and former U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson has been on its list.

But Students for Justice in Palestine, an activist group that has led violent protests on college campuses across the nation over the past year, is not.

Seventeen staff and Cabinet members of the Trump administration, including FBI Director Kash Patel, Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are currently in the crosshairs of Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Paul Cameron, founder and leader of the Colorado Springs-headquartered Family Research Institute, believes the Southern Poverty Law Center has morphed into “one of most extremist left-wing groups.”

His organization, which researches LGBTQ+ issues and also upholds biblical views on culture, has been on the hit list since shortly after its debut. At first, Cameron said mention of his organization elevated its profile nationally, which led to more support. Now, Cameron said, inclusion on the list is a non sequitur.

“It scorches conservative groups because they disagree with us,” he said. “We disagree with them. And that’s OK. We live in a largely divided society.”