Last Saturday an article reported that Representative McKinley received an award for voting 100 percent on issues of concern to the Family Research Council Action, a group which has been listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a LGBTQ hate group.

According to SPLC, the FRC ‘bills itself as the “leading voice for the family in our nation’s halls of power, but its real specialty is defaming gays and lesbians.” To identify a group as a hate group, SPLC states, “hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people.”

President of FRC, Tony Perkins called SPLC “anti-Christian.” Probably he called it anti-Christian because of its stand on rights of the LGBTQ, same -sex marriage, etc. No other groups who oppose same-sex marriage are labeled hate groups.

If we are going to look at the Representative McKinley’s voting record, we should look at his score from Network, a Catholic Lobby group for social justice. They gave him 0 percent. I believe Sen. Capito had 10 percent for this past year. Senator Manchin had 100 percent.

In case people do not know what SPLC does, they can go to the website and learn that this group has been working through the courts to protect people from groups like KKK, etc. At this time, they identify over 900 hate groups in the country. There are four in West Virginia and 31 in Ohio. I did not check the other states.

I think the Representative McKinley might want to reconsider his acceptance of the award.

Margaret Meeker

Williamstown