Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost wrote an open letter Wednesday due to the recent reactions around Cleveland City Clubthe decision to host the president of an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group.
Addressed directly to The City Club’s general manager, Dan Mouthrop, on his official letterhead with the Attorney General’s seal, Yost’s letter expressed mighty support for Center for Christian Virtue (CCV) – an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group whose president, Aaron Baer, is scheduled to appear at The City Club next month.
Yost’s public announcement comes after more than 100 LGBTQ+ leaders and organizations from across the state signed an open letter asking for changes to the forum, including City Club placing Baer on a panel presenting opposing viewpoints and hiring an independent moderator to replace City Club of Cleveland CEO Dan Moulthrop, who is currently scheduled to interview Baer at the Jan. 16 event.
“We have received expressions of support from stakeholders across the political spectrum and are grateful to hear the Attorney General’s views on this matter,” Moulthrop told The Buckeye Flame via email.
CCV first appeared on the national civil rights watchdog’s list of anti-LGBTQ+ entities hate groups in 2015 and 2017while the group continued to operate under the name Citizens for Community Values.
After six years of absence from the list, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reclassified CCV as a hate group in 2023 after publication Project CAPTAIN – “an in-depth report on anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience and its key creators.”
The Ohio-based political lobbying group was a major source of financial and political support for Ohio House Bill (HB) 68, a statewide ban on gender-affirming health care for transgender youth, which Yost also publicly supported.
Ohio’s attorney general speaks out on the matter
In a post to him personal account on social networking site XYost said LGBTQ+ activists “demand that the City Club of Cleveland cancel its January 16 speech” and confirmed that he knows Baer “both personally and professionally.”
Yost used the letter to criticize and discredit the SPLC, calling the watchdog’s list of hate groups “defamatory.”
Yost rejected the legality of the SPLC, their list, and the appearance of CCV on it:
“The center of Christian virtue orthodoxy includes a commitment to the supremacy of God and His commandment to love one another. At the various CCV events I have attended, I have never experienced hatred from any of the speakers.”
Hate group methodology
“To be on the SPLC list, a group only needs to offend progressive orthodoxy,” Yost said.
However, the SPLC presents detailed methodologies for identifying and categorizing hate groups, which includes monitoring and reviewing “publications and reports on hate groups prepared by citizens, law enforcement, field sources and media, as well as conducting its own investigations.”
The SPLC currently defines a hate group as “an organization that denigrates a particular class of people based on immutable characteristics, often through official statements, comments by a leader, or actions.”
Today’s group The Hate Map contains over 1,300 designated hate groupswith subcategories based on 21 different ideologies – including anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Muslim, Christian supremacy, white supremacy and neo-Nazism.
“Organizations on the SPLC list denigrate others based on their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity,” the group said on its website.
“We are not canceling”
Cleveland City Club general manager Dan Moulthrop – he told reporters from the conservative newspaper The Daily Signal. The forum does not plan to cancel the event scheduled for January 16.
“We are not canceling,” he told the far-right, conservative Christian publication of Heritage Foundation – conservative think tank responsible for creation Project 2025.
The Heritage Foundation was already there Forbes ranking one of the most influential think tanks in the world, and Project 2025 is widely considered to be conservative policy plan for Republican Donald Trump’s second presidential term.
According to The Daily Signal, Moulthrop “confirmed he has no intention of changing” the forum, possibly including its structure.🔥
START ACTION
- City Club of Cleveland will host Aaron Baer on Friday, January 16 at 11:30 a.m. To buy tickets, click here.
- To ask Baer a question, text The City Club at 330-541-5794.
- To access the SPLC’s 2024 Hate Map, click here.
- To access the GLAAD Center for Christian Virtue (CCV) Responsibility Profile: click here.
- If you are a newborn LGBTQ+ person in crisis, please contact Trevor’s project: 866-4-U-Trevor.
- If you are a transgender adult in crisis, please contact: National Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860
