The View’s Joy Behar ate a bit of crow Tuesday morning when she apologized for falsely accusing Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett of being a member of a Christian “hate group.”
“I have to clarify something I said yesterday,” the liberal co-host said at the top of Tuesday’s broadcast. “I want to correct something I said on air when I stated that People of Praise had been deemed a hate group.”
She continued: “I just got them mixed up with another group. It was inaccurate. So I don’t think that’s right that I should – I have to say, you know, sorry about that.”
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The veteran host went on to say that she “conflated” the group with another one, though she didn’t offer any specifics beyond that.
During Monday’s show, Behar brought up calls for Barrett to recuse herself from a case involving website developer Lori Smith’s claim that Colorado’s anti-discrimination law violates her right to free speech.
Smith contends that the state’s law clashes with her opposition to same-sex marriage and forces her to “create messages that go against my deeply held beliefs” since she is unable to turn away gay couples seeking her company’s services.
Former members of People of Praise, the reclusive and controversial faith group that is affiliated with Barrett, contend that the justice’s “lifelong and continued” membership in the community makes her too biased to rule on the case. They cite the group’s staunchly anti-gay views and history of ostracizing and expelling LGBTQ members as primary reasons Barrett should step aside.
Behar, however, took it a step further by claiming that the secretive Christian community has been deemed a so-called hate group.
“Now, here’s my question. She is, you know, a religious person. She belongs to the People of Praise group, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled them a hate group, and their founder has questioned the so-called separation of church and state,” Behar declared.
She added: “They believe that sex should occur only within marriage and, of course, between a man and a woman. They’ve got very specific things that they believe.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center, though, does not have the community on its list of hate groups.
