Allout.org Pushes PayPal to Drop Extremist Groups from Its Service

At least four extremist groups have been removed from PayPal a week after AllOut.org, the leading international gay rights organization, launched a campaign urging the online payment provider to sever its relationship with them. Six of the ten targeted organizations continue to raise money through PayPal.

The PayPal option has been disabled on the websites of Truth in Action Ministries, Brazilian extremist Julio Severo's sites, Noua Dreapta, and Dove World Outreach Center-organizations whose regular anti-LGBT hate speech puts them starkly at odds with PayPal's own ethics policy, which states that account holders "may not use the PayPal service for activities that [...] promote hate, violence, racial intolerance".

AllOut.org has called for ten organizations to be removed, and has attracted almost 40,000 signers from around the world to its petition asking for PayPal to take action. In response, the successful campaign has been dubbed "the latest example of homo-fascism," by ‘Americans for Truth About Homosexuality,' a notoriously virulent anti-LGBT group.

PayPal said this week it "take[s] very seriously any cases where a user has incited hatred, violence or intolerance because of a person's sexual orientation."

PayPal has been instrumental in helping the 10 targeted organizations to raise funds. These also include Abiding Truth Ministries, purportedly a religious group, which regularly blames gay people for the Nazi holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. The group and its leader Scott Lively have been frequently cited as a primary force behind Uganda's "Kill the gays" bill.

"When PayPal came under fire in the past for processing donations to the white supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan, the company did the right thing and promptly removed them," said Andre Banks, co-founder of Allout.org. "If PayPal hears us and terminates these ten accounts, we will cut funds from some of the most dangerous extremist groups and have a real impact against homophobia worldwide. This isn't about free speech or freedom of religion, it's about hate speech-which Paypal's own ethics policy expressly forbids."