Technology giant Amazon has dropped a Christian non-profit, the Alliance for Defending Freedom, from the AmazonSmile charity donation program after the SPLC deemed the organization a “hate group.”
According to the Federalist, the Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF), a non-profit law firm that defends Christians in cases of religious freedom, revealed in a statement on Thursday that Amazon had dropped them from AmazzonSmile, a program that allows customers to designate a charity to receive a donation from Amazon based on the customer’s purchases.
“ADF is a faith-based organization and the world’s largest legal organization advocating for the freedom to peacefully speak, live, and work according to one’s convictions without fear of government punishment,” Michael Farris, president of the ADF, wrote in a letter.
“Our organization is well respected in the legal profession as one of the nation’s most successful Supreme Court advocates,” he continued.
Farris said the exclusion was based on a judgment by the SPLC that the organization is “hateful.”
“If you are going to rely on a discredited partisan organization like the SPLC to determine who is eligible to participate in AmazonSmile, you should disclose that in your policy and to your customers,” Farris wrote.
“Your customers have a right to know that you’ve placed such an organization as the gatekeeper to participation in a charitable program,” he continued.
The SPLC, whose stated mission is to “monitor hate groups and other extremists throughout the U.S. and exposes their activities to law enforcement agencies,” has previously classed the likes of liberal Islamic reformists such as Maajid Naawiz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali as anti-Muslim extremists.
Last December, the organization also announced they were tracking the hashtags #Christmas, #MerryChristmas, #Jesus, and #ChristmasEve, as part of “trends in a community of far-right Twitter users.”
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