The Daily Agenda for Friday, May 24
Boy Scouts of America Votes To Allow Gay Members, Retains Ban On Gay Leaders
Nevada House votes to reverse marriage ban
The Daily Agenda for Thursday, May 23
It's Not the Principle, It's the Prejudice
Congratulations Mitch!
Gay Couples Excluded from Immigration Bill Markup
How To Spot A Swivel-Eyed Loon
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 500 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
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El Rose
November 1st, 2008 | LINK
NOTE: The authenticity of the commenter’s identity is in dispute. We are currently trying to clear up whether this comment was actually left by Maggie Gallagher — Jim Burroway]
—Why do I care so much about protecting the legal definition of marriage as a union of husband and wife? Many people who disagree with me ask me this. (“How will it affect your marriage?”)
Here’s my short answer in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday. A somewhat longer answer is up on The Public Discourse, the Witherspoon Institute’s rather interesting new webzine, http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com
The future of marriage, for better or worse, will be determined on Tuesday in California (with important votes as well in Florida and Arizona).
This is why I care.
Best,
Maggie
*****************************************
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-gallagher1-2008nov01,0,5151041.story
Why ‘yes’ on Proposition 8?
‘Biology, not bigotry’ is the foundation for the traditional form of marriage.
By Maggie Gallagher
November 1, 2008
As I travel across California and the country making the case for Proposition 8, I’m often asked, “Why do you care about restoring marriage?”
It’s a good question, and not just for me. Why are so many Californians rushing to street corners to hold up “Yes on 8″ signs, enduring petty vandalism, and even pettier insults, to make the case for voting yes on Proposition 8?
It’s simple: Government did not create marriage. Marriage is older than the U.S. Constitution, older even than the Bible or the Koran. Marriage’s deepest roots are in human nature and human experience. Marriage, as a judge on the Connecticut Supreme Court wrote in his compelling dissent to that court’s recent ruling allowing gays to wed, is rooted “in biology, not bigotry.”
Marriage is a virtually universal human social institution with a certain recognizable shape: It is a public union, not just a private union; it’s a sexual union and not some other kind of union; it’s a union in which the rights and responsibilities of men and women toward each other — and toward the children of their union — are publicly defined and supported, not merely left up to individuals to figure out privately.
Why do so many diverse societies arrive at this core marriage idea? There is something special about unions of husband and wife.
The answer is not hard to see. When a baby is born, a mother is bound to be somewhere close by. But if we want fathers to be there for children, and the mothers of their children, biology alone will not take us very far. We need a cultural mechanism to connect fathers to the mother-child bond. We also need an institution that communicates to the next generation — in the throes of its own erotic and romantic dramas — how seriously society takes the need to discipline those dramas so that children do not get hurt.
The word for the way society makes this connection, not only in California but in virtually every known human society, is “marriage.” Marriage is a union of husband and wife because these kinds of unions are distinctive and necessary to the whole society.
If Californians vote no on Proposition 8, the great historical cross-cultural meaning of marriage will be replaced by the new government dogma on which gay marriage is based: There is no difference between same-sex unions and opposite-sex unions; anyone who thinks otherwise is just a bigot.
Our children will imbibe this new dogma in hundreds of ways, and the old marriage idea — marriage matters because children need a mother and a father, long for a mother and a father, deserve a mother and a father — will be publicly discredited as discriminatory.
A victory for Proposition 8 will not deprive same-sex couples of a single practical right or benefit under California state laws. Civil unions will continue to provide legal protections for same-sex families. But the people of California will reclaim from four state Supreme Court justices the right to define marriage as a union of husband and wife, for generations to come.
Maggie Gallagher is president of the National Organization for Marriage, which is a major contributor to the “Yes on 8″ campaign. To help NOM’s important work, you can contribute here.
AJD
November 1st, 2008 | LINK
So let’s see, El Rose, you post an opinion column from the LA Times out of apparent inability to construct an original argument and fail to notice the utterly illogical basis of Ms. Gallagher’s argumentation.
First, she’s using the good ol’ “argument from tradition,” which is a classic logical fallacy. Second, and related to that, she apparently doesn’t realize that the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman is by no means universal (polygamy, anyone? how about same-sex marriages in ancient Greece and China?) Third, she overlooks the fact that study after study after study has shown that while the best environment for a child is with his or her biological parents, gay and lesbian couples are just as capable of caring for children. Fourth, like everyone else, she fails to point to an example of legalized same-sex marriage causing some slew of social problems.
Consider your argument (well, not really YOUR argument) refuted.
AJD
November 1st, 2008 | LINK
Never mind, I didn’t notice your name in the posting. I guess it is your argument, then. Nevertheless, it’s still an ignorant argument with little basis in fact.
Timothy Kincaid
November 1st, 2008 | LINK
El Rose,
Are you claiming to be Maggie Gallagher or are you another Maggie?
AJD
November 1st, 2008 | LINK
I was mistaken about that, too. It appears this is Maggie Gallagher, as she refers to “my short answer” in the LA Times.
Jim Burroway
November 2nd, 2008 | LINK
The email address and other information left as part of “El Rose’s” comment does not match the public information we have for Maggie Gallagher. This doesn’t mean that this isn’t Ms. Gallagher; it merely calls the commenter’s identity into question. Therefore “El Rose” is in moderation pending confirmation of her identity.
We would certainly welcome comments from Maggie Gallagher since she has been an important part of the debates. We do not, however, allow repetition of third-party articles — mostly for copyright purposes, but also because we expect comments posted at Box Turtle Bulletin to be those of the commenters themselves — as clearly stated in our comments policy..
Furthermore, we cannot allow anyone to impersonate another person. If “El Rose” isn’t Maggie Gallagher, then there are other comments which have now been linked to her which may or may not actually reflect her opinions. As it is, we don’t know.
So if “El Rose” is actually Maggie Gallagher, then welcome to the party! We’re happy to have you join us.
But if “El Rose” isn’t Maggie Gallagher, then she will be permanently banned. Until then, she is on strict moderation until this is all sorted out.
Ben in Oakland
November 4th, 2008 | LINK
El Rose is not MG, i’m fairly certain. MG is a lot smarter than ER, tohugh their arguments are similar– and as nauseatingly inaccurate.
Timothy Kincaid
November 4th, 2008 | LINK
Ben, you are correct. Maggie Gallagher has confirmed that she is not the person using the sceenname El Rose.
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