Box Turtle Bulletin

Box Turtle BulletinNews, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric
“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
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Latest Posts

The Baptist Standard calls out Texas Baptists on their hypocrisy

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Gillibrand, a willing ally

A review of the Manhattan Declaration

NJ Democrats Wiggle and Waffle

NOM's biblical Illiteracy

Texas kid beaten with metal pole, entirely preventable

Austria gets civil partnerships

Featured Reports

David Benkof: Behind the Mask

At first glance, David Benkof appears to be a young gay man who believes that same-sex marriage will damage the institution of marriage, that there are better options for gay couples than marriage, that the community should join him in prioritizing other more pressing issues, and that the marriage discussion is harming the efforts of gay couples in red states to get recognition for their unions. He also claims that he’s a gay columnist, that he speaks for an influential collection of gay thinkers, and that he is part of the gay and lesbian community and that he shares our goals and dreams. But none of that is true.

“Repeat After Me”: The Reparative Therapy Echo Chamber

The April 2008 edition of the pay-to-publish vanity journal Psychological Reports featured a new report from NARTH. Written by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, past president Joseph Nicolosi, and Richard W. Potts, the report carries the unwieldy but self-descriptive title, “Clients perceptions of how reorientation therapy and self-help can promote changes in sexual orientation.” While the title describes what the authors meant to show — how clients describe the benefits of reparative therapy — the report itself actually illustrates something very different: the ex-gay movement’s remarkable ability to instill an almost robot-like parroting of ex-gay rhetoric among their clients.

Testing the Premise: Is MRSA The New Gay Plague?

The Toronto Star said that a new study “discover[ed] a new strain” of a super-bug “hitting gay men.” Headlines in Britain screamed, “Flesh-eating bug strikes San Francisco’s gay community,” and anti-gay extremists across America spread the alarm that gays were introducing another plague into “the general population.” But there was a small problem with all of this: None of it is true!

Paul Cameron’s World

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"

 

The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths

At last, the truth can now be told.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

And don't miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.

Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Straight From The Source: What the “Dutch Study” Really Says About Gay Couples

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

Review: The Gay Report

When Karla Jay and Allan Young published The Gay Report in 1979, it quickly a favorite source of statistics for many anti-gay extremists. But before you accepts these statistic at face value, you should examine the inner workings of this survey very carefully. What you learn might surprise you.

Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count

Daniel FettyThe FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.

Focus: “N.J. Pastors Spared From Performing Civil Unions”

That represents the latest scare tactic from the anti-gay lobby.

Jim Burroway

January 18th, 2007

Did all the anti-gay extremists skip class on the day they were to learn about the First Amendment? It’s beginning to look that way.

We’ve seen Focus and other anti-gay special interest groups falsely claim that passing hate crime laws to protect gays and lesbians would infringe on their religious freedoms. This, of course, is utter nonsense. The proposed hate crime laws covers only violent crimes, not speech or beliefs. And for good reason — any attempts to curb speech would quickly run afoul of the First Amendment. Anyone who passed high school civics can understand that.

They have also opposed gay marriage while claiming that pastors would be “forced” to conduct wedding ceremonies for gay couples. This, too, is nonsense. There has never been an instance in all of American history in which the government compelled a minister to perform a religious service. That would strike at the very heart of the anti-establishment clause of the First Amendment. But as ludicrous as that idea may be, anti-gay lobbyists continue to sound that drumbeat.

Now, in a move that advances that argument to the surreal, Focus on the Family has distributed a story in which Peter LaBarbara, of the terribly misnamed and fraudulently-classified “Americans for Truth” is joined by several other extremists to perpetuate the myth that New Jersey’s civil unions law (and gay marriage in general) might have forced ministers to perform civil unions against their will:

Gay couples in New Jersey will be allowed to apply for civil unions starting in February, but Attorney General Stuart Rabner has announced that clergy members are not required to perform such unions.

Len Deo, president of the New Jersey Family Policy Council, said the decision was a relief for ministers who feared being charged with hate crimes for refusing to perform the ceremonies. …

But Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth, said pastors are not yet in the clear.

“To me, what’s shaping up is, yes, they are not forced to by the law,” he said, “but we will see the other side start to demonize and ostracize pastors that do not bless homosexual unions.”

C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League, said the weight of the law will likely eventually come to bear.

“The whole tendency is once something is legalized, it moves from being simply a liberty or a right, so-called, to something that is required,” he said. “This is something that is very dangerous.”

This is preposterous. One reason states like Vermont and New Jersey opted for civil unions was to avoid the religious connotation of the word “marriage.” While every religious tradition recognizes marriage, there is no such thing as a “civil union” in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other religious tradition. The very word “civil” in civil union should be the clue here. There is no religious ceremony that corresponds to a civil union because a “religious” civil union would be an oxymoron. This whole argument is beyond ridiculous.

But what if New Jersey had followed Massachusetts’ lead and enacted marriage instead of civil unions? Again, pastors are in the clear. There is nothing in the Constitution that empowers a government to force churches to accept beliefs they don’t want to accept. That’s the whole reason the anti-establishment clause of the First Amendment exists in the first place. And there is no hate crime law anywhere in the land that can force pastors to perform a wedding. Hate crimes address acts of violence, not thoughts, beliefs, speech or religious practices.

C.J. Doyle of the Catholic Action League should know this better than anyone. The Catholic Church defends its teachings against divorce by refusing to marry divorced persons whose previous marriage hasn’t been annulled by the Church. Any couple who shows up with a marriage license from the state won’t get very far with the parish priest if one of them were divorced and doesn’t have an annulment. As far as that priest is concerned, that civil marriage license is meaningless. In fact, that couple won’t get very far if they haven’t completed Pre-Cana counseling to the pastor’s satisfaction. Marriage license or no, a wedding ceremony won’t go forward unless that couple complies with the teachings of the Church to that pastor’s satisfaction. This has been common practice for practically forever, and the Church has the full backing of the First Amendment in doing so.

The very idea that the state of New Jersey — or anyone else — can require a minister to perform a religious ceremony is preposterous. But when it comes to scaring ordinary Americans, nothing is beyond the pale for LaBarbara, Focus, or anyone else in the anti-gay lobby.

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