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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"
Part 6: The Science Of "Love Won Out"
Part 7: The Politics Of "Love Won Out"
Part 8: Hope For Parents Who Struggle
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
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MirrorMan
July 2nd, 2008 | LINK
Just to add a little more clarification to Benkof’s “claims”, here is a letter to the editor from the July 2nd, 2008 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle:
“Misrepresented
Editor - David Benkof’s “Monogamous same-sex adultery” (June 26), included a misrepresentation of my research on gay groups and monogamy.
The pre-publication version I had seen accurately summarized my research where David had observed that I had “searched ‘marriage equality’ Web sites and found very few positive mentions of monogamy.”
As I stated on my blog in describing the nature of my project gaypatriot.net/2008/06/20, I did word searches at the Web sites of several groups (the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and Freedom to Marry, Equality California (EQ CA) and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center) and one individual (Andrew Sullivan), all of whom support “marriage equality.”
My project consisted of plugging the following two-word combinations (without quotation marks), “marriage monogamy,” “marriage monogamous,” “marriage fidelity” and “marriage adultery,” into each site’s search engine and reviewing the pages that came up. I did not do a global search for “marriage equality” as Benkof’s editorial, as published, suggests.
B. DANIEL BLATT
Los Angeles”
Not that this should come as a surprise to anyone, but it just goes to show that any paper that uses his work should think multiple times about publishing. The man just can’t keep his hands off the facts. If they don’t serve his purpose, he distorts them. Evidently he has just had something published in the Star Tribune out of Minneapolis that somehow lumps Bush’s AIDS funding in with Marriage Equality. I can’t wait to see how this reads!
Timothy Kincaid
July 2nd, 2008 | LINK
In his latest missive in some Midwest paper, Benkof actually pretends to be a gay activist. He opens the piece by telling readers he became a gay activist in 1990… but never tells them he no longer shares the values of the gay community.
Sigh.
Benkof’s standard is not to write what is true; he writes what he thinks he can get away with.
He’s just not a very moral man.
zrainswva
July 2nd, 2008 | LINK
He’s more than not a very moral man, he’s a very bad man with no integrity nor humility. Can we vote to put him back in a closet somewhere and close the door?
Rob
July 2nd, 2008 | LINK
It’s all well and good to rant about Mr. Benkof here on Boxturtle, but if you really want to have an effect, contact the papers that cover him, not just with letters to the editor, but to the publisher. Contact the advertisers in the paper and tell them that they are supporting the publication of lies and fabrications. Boycott their products. In short, actually become activists.
Just my 2-cents.
AJD
July 2nd, 2008 | LINK
Rob,
Good point, but letters to the editor are good too because of the risk that readers might actually believe Benkof’s BS.
Rob
July 2nd, 2008 | LINK
AJD;
I agree that letters to the editor help to counter the misleading statement in Benkoff’s articles or columns, or whatever he’s calling them these days. However, publishers and advertisers are much more concerned about backlash that affects their distribution numbers and their bottom lines. The anti-gay movements have used the tactics for years (boycott Ford, boycott Disney, etc., etc.) There is no reason that it can’t work the other way as well.
As much as I’m for free speech, people like Benkof need to learn that it comes with a measure of responsibility and sometimes, with consequences.
B. Daniel Blatt
July 2nd, 2008 | LINK
Thanks for including my letter in its entirety.
To be fair to David (as I said in that letter), he showed me the pre-publication version of his Op-Ed where he accurately summarized my research.
Emily K
July 2nd, 2008 | LINK
Rob, I’ve been contacting several gay papers to warn them of Benkof’s outright disdain for the truth, and for the gay community he claims membership of. Some have gotten back to me, most haven’t. Those who have gotten back to me do not speak highly of Benkof and refuse to publish his work.
Rob
July 3rd, 2008 | LINK
Excellent Emily. I’ve contacted the Canadian (I live in Toronto) gay press as well as most of the national press… things are a little different here, and most of what he writes would be rejected by the press anyway.
As a brief aside on the power of writing, I belonged to a web site that allowed comments, and the phrase “it’s so gay” and calling people “fags” showed up by posters on a regular basis. The moderators would remove anything with a racial tone, but had no problem with anti-gay slurs. I wrote to them several times, nothing happened. Then I started contacting the advertisers on the site and pasting in he comments that were being left, with the question of ” is this what you want your product associated with?” I would then send a copy of the email to the advertiser to the moderators. It was amazing how fast it changed.
My point is that we do have power, and can use that power to actually make a difference.
MirrorMan
July 3rd, 2008 | LINK
To: B. Daniel Blatt
You are most welcome. Unlike Mr. Benkof, I don’t want to be misunderstood, and I will cite full examples of what I am referring to. I do find it odd, however, that you wish to be fair to David, when from his track record it appears he has no interest in returning the favor.
Jim Burroway
July 3rd, 2008 | LINK
To be fair, fairness doesn’t depend on fairness. It just is. ;-)
Being fair isn’t the same as unilateral disarmament. It’s essential to credibility, which is the core problem with what Benkof writes.
MirrorMan
July 3rd, 2008 | LINK
I guess I should have worded that differently. Mea Culpa.
Round two: “I applaud your wish to be fair to Mr. Benkof. If only he understood what that was.”
Better?
Regan DuCasse
July 3rd, 2008 | LINK
Well, seeing the way DB backhanded and flipped our own statements on us, it’s no wonder he would do the same with credible information about gay people that isn’t all negative or fear inducing.
He’s an embarassment to journalism, to gay and straight people who care about the truth. He’s a detriment to helping gay and straight people get along better and he speaks from two faces.
A person of profound emptiness would have to be like that and do what he does. And it’s just plain ugly.
Very.
Protect Marriage Equality » Box Turtle Bulletin: FRC Repeats Benkof’s Distortions
July 3rd, 2008 | LINK
[...] the entire blog entry by Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin. posted by Equality Blogger at 9:40 am filed under Analysis, Strategy, Research, Marriage Equality [...]
Anything but Straight: Extremist Makeover « Nottington News
July 16th, 2008 | LINK
[...] be about a topic, such as President Bush’s record on AIDS, but the real intention was to smear gay people and make the GLBT community look perverse, untrustworthy, selfish and unworthy of basic human [...]
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