by Jardine Malado
This article was first posted
An online payment company has stopped providing its services to a Lousiana-based Christian organization that has been labeled as a hate group by
the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
In a statement issued on Friday, The Ruth Institute, a Catholic nonprofit based in Lake Charles, Louisiana, announced that Vanco Payment Solutions
has opted to discontinue their business relationship.
“The Ruth Institute learned at 2 PM Thursday that Vanco, our online donation processing service, was cancelling our service immediately,” the statement
read, reported by Life Site News.
Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of the Ruth Institute, said that the organization was “flagged by Card Brands as being affiliated
with a product/service that promotes hate, violence, harassment and/or abuse.”
“The Ruth Institute’s primary focus is family breakdown and its impact on children: understanding it, healing it, ending it. If this makes us a
‘hate group,’ so be it,” Morse stated.
Morse noted that The Ruth Institute has been listed on SPLC’s “hate map,” since 2013, adding that no one from Vanco, Card Brands or Wells Fargo
has ever contacted the Christian group to inquire about the designation.
After confirming that the online payment service had indeed cut them off, Morse and her staff contacted the institute’s regular contributors to
alert them about the news and assure them that their private information has not been compromised.
The Ruth Institute, which describes itself as an organization that seeks to create “a mass social movement to end family breakdown by energizing
the Survivors of the Sexual Revolution,” was just one of a growing number of Christian organizations that have been included on SPLC’s list
of “hate groups.”
Last month, D. James Kennedy Ministries, formerly known as Coral Ridge Ministries, filed a defamation lawsuit against the SPLC for including the ministry on the list, alongside racist and anti-Semitic extremist groups like the Aryan
Nation and the Ku Klux Klan.
The Christian ministry has recently aired a special on SPLC called “Profit$ of Hate,” in which it details how SPLC’s designation has led to violence
against Christian organizations.
In 2012, a gun-wielding LGBT activist named Floyd Lee Corkins headed to the headquarters of Family Research Council (FRC) in Washington D.C. and
targeted its employees, but he was thwarted by the building manager Leo Johnson.
Corkins later told the FBI that he found FRC through the “Southern Poverty Law [Center] lists [of] … anti-gay groups.”
Morse asked her supporters to redirect their donations to their main office, located at 4845 Lake St. #217 Lake Charles, LA 70605.
She said that she respects the right of Vanco, Card Brands, and Wells Fargo to conduct their businesses as they see fit since they are private
companies. “We just wish wedding photographers, bakers and florists received the same respect,” she said.
The Ruth Institute has compiled a list of items some groups have found objectionable on a webpage called “Where’s the Hate?” Morse said that anyone
interested can review the material and judge for themselves whether the Institute belongs on a list alongside the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis.