After years of defending the non-governmental Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a “valuable resource,” the Department of Defense has finally scrubbed the left-wing activist organization’s resources from its training materials:

Brian J. Field, assistant U.S. attorney from the Civil Division, stated that the Department of Defense (DOD) Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity removed any and all references to the SPLC in training materials used by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI), in an email obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation from the Department of Justice.

Controversy arose in late 2013 and early 2014 when the US military’s “equal opportunity” training program was revealed to be using the SPLC’s “hate group” designations to designate legitimate Christian organizations as off limits to US personnel.

Recently the SPLC has come under fire from various factions, including Christian groups on its list like the Family Research Council, which claims the list inspired a gunman to open fire at the FRC office in Washington DC in 2012. Guidestar, an organization that ranks charities, began including SPLC designations in its descriptions — until outcry caused it to back down. Even militant atheists — some of whom have cited the SPLC like their own Bible — have attacked the SPLC because the group began to include atheists among its “hate” groups.

There may be cause for the military to have designated groups from which it bans its troops, but the military doesn’t need to rely on outside extremist organizations to create those designations — lest it fall victim to those organization’s ideologies.

With reference to the Religion Clause.  Also at OneNewsNow.