LifeSiteNews:

Documents uncovered from a Freedom of Information Act request show the Obama administration's Department of Justice enjoys a close relationship with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization that brands principled opposition to homosexuality “hate.”

The SPLC has built an elaborate fundraising empire by branding mainstream Christian ministries – including the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and Concerned Women for America – as “hate groups” for opposing homosexuality.

The legal watchdog Judicial Watch filed the request to see what effect SPLC's designation of “hate groups” had on the government. The two-dozen pages of e-mails it received reveal views of DOJ employees that border on adulation.

The department invited co-founder Morris Dees to appear as the featured speaker at a July 31, 2012, “Diversity Training Event.” The Assistant Attorney General's office “wants to take Morris out to lunch” before his simulcast remarks, entitled “With Justice for All,” one e-mail stated.

A “training blurb” stated that the event “qualifies for mandatory annual diversity training.”

“I will pick you [Morris Dees] up at the airport July 30,” DOJ employee Barry Kowalski wrote Dees in an e-mail. “Would you go out to dinner with my wife and me and our two teenage daughters that first night? The girls need some inspiration from a master of inspiration,” he gushed.