Editor’s Note: The following letters to the editor are in response to Courier-Herald editor Ray Miller-Still’s editorial that ran in the Aug. 3 edition of The Reporter.

Recently, the editor of the Courier-Herald indicated that the Southern Poverty Law Center designates theAlliance Defending Freedom as a hate group. It was clarified that the group does not commit hate crimes— a positive clarification. But the only basis for the ADF’s designation as a hate group was “their publicopinions and legal work against the LGBTQ community.”

In other words, any group that does not adhere to very recent (historically-speaking) perspectives on sexuality which reject marriage and sexuality as defined by the Bible is considered a hate group.

The taking of such a position, especially by a journalist in a news publication, is unnecessarilyinflammatory, misleading and inherently offensive to the significant percentage of readers who respect the Bible as the Word of God.

Dan Gannon