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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A person identified in news reports as “a gay man who identified as a woman” was shot and killed Friday night in Syracuse.
Samantha Davis
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
Calling a trans woman who was just murdered “man” “him” and using her old name? I expect that kind of transphobic language from the AFA, not you. I expected better, a lot better.
Kelly Marie Stephens
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
Fuck you. Trish Cannon was a woman. No matter whether or not you actually think she was.
As a transwoman myself i find your posting highly offensive.
You are a disgrace to bloggers everywhere and lost all respect i had for you.
Tiffany
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
Seriously, it’s not okay to refer to a trans woman as a male and use her preferred name as a nickname. I know you’re probably just repeating the way the original articles were written, but the articles wrote the information in very offensive language. Teish deserves to be treated with more respect.
Willie Hewes
November 19th, 2008 | LINK
Yeah, what gives, Jim? She identified as a woman, her family accepts her as a woman, why are you referring to her as a man?
This is very sad. At least the Police chief seems to get it. Well, maybe.
Jim Burroway
November 19th, 2008 | LINK
I don’t know Teish, and I don’t know exactly how Teish saw herself. As you can see from the news reports yourself, her family accepted her as a woman, but they also sometimes referred to her as “him” as well as “her.”
Teish’s mother said, “That’s the life he chose. That’s who he wanted to be,” yet she also kept photos of Teish as a woman prominently displayed in the home, and gave the photo you see in the post to the local news media. It was precisely this ambiguity from Teish’s mother which gave me pause.
From the material available to me, it is very unclear to me precisely what identity Teish followed. I struggled for a very long time to try to figure out how to best represent Teish. My intent was to try to portray Teish as accurately as I possibly could with what’s available to me.
While I know that many people identify solely as one gender or another, some people experience some fluidity in gender. In fact, I once got a serious yelling by someone who rejected all gender labels, and I also have come to know an acquaintance who is very clear that he is a he sometimes, and a she at other times. Based in these experiences, I will not presume to attach labels to anyone beyond what is presented to me, and so I did not want to preclude the possibility that Teish experienced a similar degree of fluidity.
With the ambiguity of these news reports, it appeared to me that Teish’s identity may have been somewhat fluid as well, since people around her also identified Teish as “gay” with a male lover. Was “gay” also a term Teish used? I can’t tell.
And of course, news reports themselves may be inaccurate. They often are when reporting on transgender people. But right now, they are all I have to go on.
I meant no disrespect whatsoever. In fact, I was motivated to try to provide as much respect as possible. With the material before me, my intent was to represent Teish in the most accurate way possible without imposing labels which weren’t presented to me. I was trying to leave Teish’s identity as open as the material appeared to be.
When I wrote about Angie Zapata, her identity was much more precise, and so my writing reflected that. I will certainly welcome more clarity in Teish’s case. And as that information becomes available, I’ll respond accordingly.
Samantha Davis
November 19th, 2008 | LINK
Jim,
I don’t find it surprising that her family would refer to her as “him” and use her male name. I know of a lot of trans people who’s parents treat them like that; I wouldn’t expect that behavior to change just because the person died.
Also, the joke is, they probably think of themselves as “accepting” even though they are far from it.
Jim Burroway
November 19th, 2008 | LINK
Update: According to police, Teish was “not dressed as a woman” at the time of the shooting. I don’t know what that is meant to say exactly. I’ve updated the post to be more gender neutral, but I’m still looking for published confirmation as to Teish’s self-identity.
—
Again, for the reasons I’ve outlined above, I am not going to “read in” an identity when published reports remain ambiguous. I should note that the LGBT press has made the same call I did.
Of course, on the other hand, as we learn more I will revise this post as necessary. But I’ve gotten into too much trouble before in making assumptions on how people chose to identify and express their gender. Where it’s cut and dried, it’s an easy call to make. But I have encountered too many situations personally to know that one can’t always assume that it’s cut and dried. And as I have learned, assuming wrongly can be just as insulting.
SarahG
November 20th, 2008 | LINK
This GIRL’s name is Latiesha Green. If you had bothered to do a simple fact check and read what the other news agencies in the area are saying (including WSYR TV9), you’d find that this is a MtF Transsexual, NOT a guy, or a gay guy- and the victim’s family has been saying so from the very start. Fact of the matter is that WSYR570AM is the area’s conservative news & talk radio station, most of their programing are shows like Rush… and yet WSYR has no problem referring to this GIRL as Letiesha Green, and has no problem using female pronouns and/or being gender neutral. The ONLY media agency that is avoiding APA guidelines & calling her male, by her legal name (“Moses”) and a “gay guy” is the Syracuse Post Standard- which, I might add, has been well notified by several individuals of their mistake, and nonetheless continues to spew hateful insults towards the Victim and her family.
werdna
November 20th, 2008 | LINK
This report from WSYR tv does help clarify some of the ambiguity in the coverage. It is made explicit that Latiesha lived a a woman since she was 16 years old and that her family respected and supported her. There is still some slippage in the way her mother, Roxanne Green, describes her, e.g., “my son… my daughter”, but this is likely the result of the enormous grief that they are feeling after this terrible tragedy. It is heart wrenching to hear Latiesha’s mother talking about the loss of her child, the difficulties Latiesha faced as a transsexual woman, and the support and love her family gave her.
Even as the reporter makes clear that Latiesha lived as a woman, she says right at the top of the story, “…police say he [DeLee] killed a man because he’s gay.” Though she occasionally refers to Latiesha using female pronouns, she also continues to refer to her as male, as does the Syracuse police chief. In one particularly lurid moment the reporter says, “Latiesha was no stranger to the torment that surrounded her lifestyle”.
Jim is not a reporter, he’s merely sharing information from other sources and most of those available sources are perpetuating the misunderstanding about Cannon’s gender identity. It’s one thing to offer sources that clarify the situation, it’s another to attack Jim for sharing the information in as accurate a way as he is able.
I think the important thing here is that someone has been killed simply for being who she was. This is a truly awful and unacceptable thing. My heart goes out to the grieving family and to all who knew and loved Latiesha. I’m glad to know that whatever confusion and discomfort police may have with Latiesha’s identity, they have acted swiftly to apprehend and charge the alleged killer and have been clear that this was a bias-motivated crime.
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