Catholics beware: Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger apparently doesn’t consider it disqualifying for someone to endorse an activist group that considers the official teaching of your faith “hateful.”
Stanley Meador, formerly the special agent in charge at the Richmond FBI office, approved the notorious memo targeting “radical-traditional Catholics” and citing as a reliable source a far-left activist group that characterizes part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as hateful enough to merit inclusion on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.
Spanberger, who presents herself as a moderate and uniter, nominated Meador the commonwealth’s next secretary of public safety and homeland security.
To be sure, Meador has an impressive resume: he received a Virginia “Declaration of Valor” for his response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attack at the Pentagon and a Sheriff’s Star Award for his efforts in dismantling a gang enterprise in Spokane, Washington.
Yet Spanberger never mentioned the scandal that likely led the FBI to put Meador on administrative leave in June.
The FBI Memo
Under Meador’s leadership, the FBI’s Richmond office crafted a memo urging agents to probe the supposed nexus between “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and “radical-traditional Catholics,” citing the SPLC and including a list of SPLC-designated “hate groups” for agents to target.
The FBI told The Daily Signal in February 2023 that the memo “does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI” and would be rescinded immediately. Meador later approached Catholics in Virginia to try to mend the rift. FBI Director Kash Patel described the SPLC as a “partisan smear machine” when announcing that the bureau had cut all ties to the organization under his leadership.
The Southern Poverty Law Center gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy in the 1980s, but it has weaponized that reputation, putting mainstream conservative and Christian groups on a “hate map” with Klan chapters. This map is a double-edged sword: it helps the SPLC raise money by exaggerating “hate” and presenting the SPLC as the solution to it; and it helps the SPLC police the national discourse by demonizing those who dissent from its radical agenda as hateful.
The SPLC pushes transgender ideology and brands those who oppose it “anti-LGBTQ hate groups,” even when they themselves are made up of lesbian and gay members. It supports divisive racial lessons in school and brands parental rights groups that disagree “extremists,” adding them to the “hate map.”
In 2019, amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal that led the SPLC to fire its co-founder and see its president resign, a former employee called the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam” aimed at bilking donors.
The “hate map” inspired a terrorist to target a conservative Christian nonprofit in the District of Columbia, in 2012. The assassination of Charlie Kirk followed just a few months after the SPLC put his organization, Turning Point USA, on the “hate map.” The SPLC condemned both of these attacks, but has yet to remove either group from the map.
A Particularly Bad Record on Catholicism, Christianity
Yet the SPLC’s record is particularly atrocious when it comes to conservative Christianity and Catholicism, in particular.
Critics have long accused the SPLC of being anti-Christian, and the group responded to these claims by noting that it does not put all Christian groups on the “hate map.” For years, the SPLC cited its decision not to put the organization Focus on the Family on the “hate map” as evidence it wasn’t anti-Christian. This year, it added Focus to the map.
Yet the worst attack on Catholicism arguably came when the SPLC added The Ruth Institute, a Lousiana-based nonprofit dedicated to helping the victims of the sexual revolution, to the “hate map.” It cited as evidence of “hate” a quote from the institute’s founder, Jennifer Roback Morse. Morse had quoted the Catechism of the Catholic Church, stating that homosexual activity is “intrinsically disordered.” Even now, the SPLC lists that quote as proof that her organization is a “hate group,” even though it comes directly from the Catechism, a document that binds one billion Catholics around the world.
“If this claim is enough to make an organization a ‘hate group,’ then the SPLC should call the Catholic Church a ‘hate group.’ Otherwise, it is being intellectually dishonest,” I wrote in my book, Making Hate Pay. “The Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination, claiming one billion adherents. By the SPLC’s criteria, this massive church representing more than one eighth of the world’s population should be considered a ‘hate group.’ It doesn’t get more mainstream than that.”
Spanberger can call herself “moderate” until she’s blue in the face. She can call her transition team “United for Virginia’s Future” all she likes. But the fact remains, she just promoted a man who approved one of the most notorious documents to come out of the FBI, and Virginians of faith deserve an explanation.
