Katrina Lantos Swett, founder of the Lantos Foundation and a co-chair of the International Religious Freedom Summit that took place in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, responded to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s attack on the summit in a statement.
The SPLC, a left-leaning advocacy group notorious for branding mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups” and placing them on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, attacked the summit for providing “a platform for multiple anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups and personalities who cloak their hate in religious rhetoric.” The SPLC highlighted organizations it has branded “hate groups” and other conservative Christians who oppose the LGBT agenda.
Lantos Swett, a lifelong Democrat, co-chaired the summit alongside Republican Sam Brownback, a former Kansas governor, senator, and ambassador-at-large for religious freedom under then President Donald Trump. She wrote,
“While I appreciate much of the important work done by the Southern Poverty Law Center in past years, I think SPLC sometimes misses the mark in its critique of important advocacy work that does not fully align with its views. This is clearly one such instance.”
The International Religious Freedom Summit highlighted persecution of Kyiv-aligned Christians in Ukraine, Christians in Nigeria, and many religious minorities—particularly Uyghur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists—in China.