NOM Commits Sodomy
The Daily Agenda for Saturday, February 11
The Daily Agenda for Friday, February 10
Again anti-gays blindly and gleefully shoot themselves in the foot
Rep. Walsh leads with her heart
Advocate, WaPo, AP Get it Wrong On Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Uganda Executive, Parliament Tussle Over Anti-Homosexuality BIll
The Daily Agenda for Thursday, February 9
Featured Reports
What Are Little Boys Made Of?
In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
Slouching Towards Kampala: Uganda’s Deadly Embrace of Hate
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 450 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
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
The 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.
News, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric
Posts 
Posts via daily email:
Cooner
April 1st, 2007 | LINK
Jim,
Been watching your site for a few weeks now; nice stuff. This is a terrific story about Zach. Likewise, I didn’t come out (in stages) until my early to mid-30s; fortunately, my parents, whose feelings I still respected even if I was no longer dependent on them, proved as loving and accepting as I could have hoped.
Anyway, this is the kind of effect that people either don’t realize or willfully ignore when they cry about “gay recruiting,” or wish to expunge any and all reference to homosexuality from education or popular culture, or try to push a “keep it in the bedroom, but I don’t want to hear about it in polite conversation” mentality about things.
The biggest and most obvious reason for making sure homosexuality is an open topic of discussion and making sure information is freely available, is to make sure that more kids like Zach will be able to accept who they are and have more chance to become happy, healthy, well-adjusted individuals, without the unnecessary heartache and confusion that all-to-often leads to depression, drug use, family tension, suicide, and a number of other serious problems. Isn’t that compassion?
Roger
April 1st, 2007 | LINK
yes, I’m a bit envious. It would have been dangerous for me to come out when I was in high school and I denied my feelings so much that I didn’t accept my orientation until my mid-thirties. My mother was dead by then, but my dad accepted me as I was. And then I found out that the therapist that I though I’d been taken to in order to figure out my I.Q. (when I was about five) was actually there because my parents thought I might be a ‘pre-homosexual child’ and wanted to help me grow up straight.
That best advice may have helped in forging a good relationship with my parents, but sure didn’t make me anything but gay.
Liadan
April 1st, 2007 | LINK
Excuse me, Zach 1? May I borrow your parents to see if I can isolate whatever element is missing from mine?
Lynn David
April 1st, 2007 | LINK
I did not come out until well into my 40s. I don’t know if time was a key or if my mother would have been as supportive in my teens as she was 30 years later. Silly me for not finding out, eh?
___________________________________________
And…. As I was reading this story over my morning herbal tea, it just struck me that the opposite of being gay is not ex-gay…. the true opposite is indeed being miserably unhappy about who you are.
And that is the behind the entirety of the socio-political underpinnings of the ex-gay/change philosophy. It’s not that 1.6% to 33% of gays can change (change meaning a difference which lasts for at least 6 months), it’s that 1.6% to 33% of gays who can be shamed into believing they are evil and must then change (change meaning a difference which lasts for at least 6 months).
The number of people that they can change, not necessarily the percentage increase but simply the number that might change (for however short a time), is dependant upon the absolute number which may be shamed enough by societal and relgious pressures. The religous/faith-based pressure has always been there in society.
The political pressure which ex-gay groups tacitly approve is now necessary in that egalitarian society which Christianity envisioned. Thus democracy then is no longer that means to an egalitarian society, but that means by which to impart societal pressure.
All of which is meant to shame the individual into not accepting himself. Thus their numbers may be increase even though their percentage of success may plummet.
John Holm
April 2nd, 2007 | LINK
What a heartwarming and encouraging story! Like most of the folks who have posted before me, I came out later in life, although not as late as some. I came out last year, at the age of 25. It seems my story is somewhere in between Jim’s story (out in his 40s) and Zach’s (out in his teens). I hope this is a trend that continues.
I really got a kick out of this line in the NYTimes article: “One kid followed me class to class calling me ‘faggot,’ ” he says. “After a month I turned and punched him in the face. He got quiet and walked away. I said, ‘You got beat up by a faggot.’ ” :-) Man, I wish I had had the balls to do that to my high school bullies!
Leave A Comment