Oh CAPTAIN, My CAPTAIN

Southern Poverty Law Centre's legal hopes rest on an international smear campaign

In May 2024, The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) added the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) and Genspect to its list of hate groups.

Unsealed evidence in the US court case Boe vs Marshall (dealing with access to paediatric transition) earlier this year contained snippets of internal WPATH emails revealing their concern over academic critics like SEGM:

I think we need a more detailed defense that we can use that can respond to academic critics and that can be used in the many court cases that will be coming up. […] we know that some of the studies we have cited in support of our recommendations will be torn about by organizations such as the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine.

SPLC are representing the plaintiffs in this case, so at the same time as they are waging a legal campaign which relies on WPATH’s evidence, they are also formally designating groups who WPATH privately fear will tear apart that evidence as “hate groups”. Rather than being impartial and evidence-based designations these labels are little more than reputational attacks as part of an ongoing legal strategy in the highly polarised political landscape in the US.

The more US-based lobbyists can publicly discredit SEGM, the more suspicion can be cast on anyone with any connection to them, any evidence they produce, and now on the findings of the Cass Review. The fact is that the Cass Review’s damning assessment of the evidence for the efficacy and safety of puberty blockers fatally undermines legal cases based on arguing the opposite. The Cass Review is already being cited by their Republican opponents, so in the absence of any actual response grounded in evidence, SPLC’s huge resources are turned to an international smear campaign - one that is exemplified by their CAPTAIN report, which as I’ve previously discussed is built on an echo chamber of activist groupthink and conspiracist logic.

SPLC’s attacks on SEGM serve as a foundation for critical commentary directed against the Cass Review. Since the release of that report - and the later “hate group” designation that it led to - links between SEGM and the Cass Review have been played up in media reports, and by activists like Erin Reed in an effort to undermine public reception of Cass’ findings:

Most recently, members of the newly designated hate group, Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, helped advise the Cass Review in the United Kingdom,

This week, Reed brought further focus on the NHS, complaining that several clinicians connected to the Cass Review will be speaking at the 2024 SEGM conference in Athens. This article has also been reposted by The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention.

Three times in this piece Reed draws attention to SEGM’s “shared funding streams” with the far right:

Notably, SEGM’s funding streams include the same groups that fund the Heritage Foundation, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Family Research Council, far-right organizations capitalizing on Christian nationalism.

The source for this is SPLC’s CAPTAIN report, where the basis of this allegation is that in 2020 and 2021 SEGM received donations from four large charitable foundations - American Online Giving Foundation, Fidelity Investments, Vanguard, and the Edward Charles Foundation - which have also either a) received money from bad actors or b) donated money to bad actors:

a large part of SEGM’s funding in 2020 came through a $100,000 donation from the Edward Charles Foundation

…

Analyses of additional financial records from 2021 reveal that SEGM’s total revenue nearly quadrupled from the previous year to nearly $800,000, and that funding appears to have come primarily from donor advised funds. The largest contribution, which came from Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, totals over $350,000. Notably, Fidelity and Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program (which also donated to SEGM in 2021) have a history of directing money to anti-LGBTQ+ groups, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council.

…

[In 2020] In addition to Heritage Foundation, that year, the Charles Koch Institute contributed […] $1.3 million to the Edward Charles Foundation (which funded SEGM that year).

So, taking the Edward Charles Foundation as an example, SPLC cannot outright say something like “SEGM are funded by the Koch Institute” - because there is no evidence of that. All they can say is that in the same tax year as the Edward Charles Foundation received $1.3 million from Koch, the Edward Charles Foundation gave $100k to SEGM. That’s all - and all they do is present these numbers near each other, and thereby strongly imply a financial connection between the Heritage Foundation and SEGM, without actually saying so - which then, in the hands of activists like Reed becomes definitive. There’s nothing here but insinuation - and seemingly false, since according to this Undark report, it was an individual donor who gave money via the Edward Charles Foundation, who simply wishes to remain anonymous:

The donor, a 68-year-old woman from California who asked to remain anonymous because she feared harassment, described herself as a non-religious feminist who had supported Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

However, in the case of American Online Giving Foundation, Fidelity Investments and Vanguard the accusation of “shared funding streams” becomes quite staggering hypocrisy. These are huge foundations, collectively worth $21 billion annually, that make thousands and thousands of donations every year, not only to dubious organisations like Alliance Defending Freedom or Family Research Council, but also to SPLC themselves.

• In 2020/21 the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund gave SEGM $363,500, while also giving SPLC $4,065,459. 

• In 2020/21 Vanguard gave SEGM $22,000 and SPLC 45 times more: $1,084,650

• In 2020/21, The American Online Giving Foundation gave SEGM just $15,201 and SPLC over 130 times more: $1,995,272

And while those much smaller donations to SEGM appear to be one-offs, SPLC have received similar amounts in preceding and subsequent years. Over the past three years, SPLC have received $22 million from these three foundations alone. If receiving grants from these foundations constitutes “shared funding streams” with the far right, as Erin Reed describes it, then the same is true many, many times over of SPLC.

The origin of these claims of "shared funding” go back to the highly conspiracist posts of Health Liberation Now, the activist co-authors of the CAPTAIN report, who cite themselves for these claims in the report itself. Originally they had SEGM in their sights, so I doubt they checked whether their conspiracist logic would apply to SPLC - but in December 2023, when SPLC gave their official stamp to this “research” - and the ensuing “hate group” designation - did they not realise they were implicating themselves?

There’s two possibilities. Either SPLC did not verify this information, in spite of their near-limitless financial resources, in which case why should anybody take anything they say seriously given this level of incompetence? Alternatively, they do know that these allegations of shared funding streams are far more applicable to themselves, in which case this is pure deceit on their part.

There are millions sloshing about in opaque funds, with wealthy US philanthropists funnelling money to pet causes or exploiting tax breaks, and SPLC is one of the fattest pigs at the trough, with three-quarters of a billion dollars in reserve, which they are now using to baselessly smear the reputations of clinicians in the UK in service of an ideological legal agenda in the US.

Southern Poverty Law Centre financials for 2023

I think that anyone seeking to understand and address the misinformation and disinformation currently being spread about the Cass Review need to take a long look at the incredibly well-financed activists in the US who have been successfully traducing tiny organisations and blameless individuals, with no serious opposition, for years. As with feminist targets before, these attacks don’t stop at the door of SEGM - they spread, by relentless guilt-by-association, to contaminate absolutely everyone who touches them, or anyone connected to them. Unchecked claims like this are toxic to public discourse, spreading and gaining traction with zero corrective force, creating an unwarranted chilling effect around their targets. Bystanders are quick to believe there is no smoke without fire, and UK clinicians cannot realistically defend their reputations from this sort of partisan dreck from the US. Blandly wondering why the Cass Review has been “largely ignored” in the US misses the point - it is not merely being ignored, it is actively being undermined.