The best defense against these extremist zealots, is to continue to broaden cultural support for acceptance of all LGBT persons. The more acceptance and respect are the cultural norm, then the more the extremists are at the fringe and less comfortable acting out in illegal and dangerous ways.
It the importance and weight of the Souther Poverty Law Project’s pronouncement is to mean anything and have any affect, we have to be willing to draw a clear delineation between hate speech and anti-gay speech. It may be true that most often they are the same thing, but the distinction allows for Free Speech and the requirement for dialogue to be filled with facts and the truth.