Blogswarm: Call Nancy Pelosi, Demand ENDA's Passage
Gays Excluded From Some Clinical Trials
San Diego candidate learns not to buddy up to ex-gay gadfly James Hartline
New military survey on DADT
Episcopal Church approves lesbian bishop
Catholic Church continues to have predatory priest problems
NOM funds DC Candidate with questionable ethics
Thursday's testimony to include pro- and anti-DADT former soldiers
Featured Reports
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 two hundred 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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AJD
December 21st, 2008 | LINK
“It may be my own personal bias, or perhaps that of the reporters, but Lewis and Horton are the far more sympathetic couple.”
I got that impression too, but I don’t think it’s because of bias on anyone’s part. Both Lewis and Horton obviously had a tough time growing up, and their joy in being married and winning some acceptance from their families was robbed from them by the passage of Prop. 8.
The Ferreiras, on the other hand, are a rich couple living in a gated community with a hugely inflated sense of worry and an obvious animus toward gay people (but they would call that animus “love”).
elaygee
December 21st, 2008 | LINK
How nice that they let an ex con and drug addict get married and reproduce and VOTE (whoever gave him back his voting priviledges should be shot) It seems that most of the people who can’t control their own bad behavior want Gay people to be controlled by them.
Two portraits of marriage « break the terror
December 21st, 2008 | LINK
[...] (h/t Box Turtle Bulletin) [...]
PSUdain
December 21st, 2008 | LINK
Isn’t it also so ironic that they’ve been divorced? And then she remarried. And divorced AGAIN. And then the two of them got back together, and re-married.
They can tell me that, “God hates divorce, too,” all they like. But I don’t see them out there crusading to outlaw that.
If they were legally allowed to commit an “ungodly act”, why are they striving so we can’t legally commit our own “ungodly act”?
Rafael
December 21st, 2008 | LINK
As far as I remember the words of the book of Matthew pertaining the Sermon of the Mount, it wasn’t divorce per se that was condemned by Jesus — he condemned re-marrying, which he equated to adultery in God’s eyes.
What does that make of the Ferrera’s union?
Rick
December 21st, 2008 | LINK
Honestly, that Ferreira profile sickened me. What in the world did THEY have to lose if Prop 8 failed? What substantial, tangible, lasting effect can my marriage possibly have on those two? They don’t like it, they think it’s immoral. Big deal. I find their ostentatious wealth and disregard for that ‘world outside the gate’ to be obscene.
Lynn David
December 21st, 2008 | LINK
They’ve got the marriage and the hair… what more could they want?
lurker
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
What I want to know is . . . if God can make a queer person straight (with the right spiritual guideance of course) why can’t God make a divorcee love her first husband? or her second? Can’t God just make you love the “right” person? Isn’t it all about “maturity”?
Ken R
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
I just loved the article (sarcasm) and how they (the Ferreiras) say God hates divorce and how its ugly. That they are broken too. But they never once said it was a SIN, IMMORAL, or PERVERTED. That’s where the difference lies. The words. Nor did they say divorce should be outlawed but felt they had to defend marriage from the gays.
I simply don’t believe a word that the Ferreiras say. If they clearly believe divorce was ugly, sinful, and wrong and against God they would have remained married together despite what problems they had because they were bible believers. Or the very least separated and remained celibate until their deaths. She admitted to marrying another man/then divorced which clearly makes her a perpetual adulterer which she herself would never admit to. The article didn’t say what he did after the divorce from their first marriage but its possible he dated. So this clearly shows me that their sins are in fact trivial compared to the gays and lesbians that have the BIGGER SIN that they need to overcome. At this point I literally want to vomit especially when they say its done out of loving the sinner (us) but hating the sin. *grabs the paper bag*
I have come to the conclusion from all of what I have been reading over the last 3 years about conservative Christianity relating to homosexuality is that they truly view the gay community with much more contempt compared to other sinners and view their own sins as lesser because they themselves cannot live with the idea that perhaps they are perverted and immoral in their own lives.
Ken R
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
I also wanted to add that not once did I ever hear a fundamentalist/evangelical conservative Christian refer to himself as immoral, perverted, and evil when it pertains to their own sinful ways.
Truly words do make a difference!
lurker
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
“The first time they wanted to take prayer out of schools, we as believers should have stood up,” said Abel, “Every time you give them a little bit, they want more.”
Yeah, like when they let all those divorced people parade around openly in church . . . we should have put our foot down THEN.
lurker
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
Cody & Christopher –
If you happen to read this: thank you for your inspriational leadership. and congratulations!
Bryan Blumberg
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
A small error in your otherwise fine observation in the distinctions between the gay and the straight couple. The straight couple did not give up All My Children. They gave up Days of Our Lives. :)
L. Junius Brutus
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
Let’s also not disregard the culpability of the LA Times. I was disgusted by the way they tried to portray those two sympathetically. If this had been the 1960s, surely they would sympathetically portray the “Segregation Now, Segregation Forever” crowd.
Patrick
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
“‘I’m just seeing our morals and everything just deteriorating before us,’ Robbie, 49, said one recent evening.”
- Yes, we must harken back to the good old moral days when we had slaves, child labor, banned women and blacks from voting, put Japanese-Americans in internment camps. If only we could be that moral again (please note sarcasm).
**
“One Sunday about a year ago, Garlow told his congregation what he thought the consequences of legalizing same-sex marriage would be. Pastors around the state would be required to marry gays, he said.”
- How is this not lying from the pulpit? Any pastor who has an iota of intelligence knows that Catholic priests are not forced to marry people who don’t meet their standards.
**
“Gay marriage, he said, is a threat to heterosexual marriage.”
- Because all those closeted gays in heterosexual marriages will divorce and marry someone of the same sex?
Patrick
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
“They were married, had three children and then divorced. Ten years ago, they remarried. In the interim, Robbie had married and divorced another man. The Ferreiras insist their divorces do not make them hypocrites in the fight for Proposition 8 and the preservation of the “sacredness” of marriage. They say it just proves that they are flawed people like everyone else.”
- Deuteronomy 24:1-4 explicits bans such a remarriage, calls it an abomination, states this woman is defiled, and that the marriage will bring sin on the land. In other words, they are hypocrites.
Deut 24:1-4 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house, and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man’s wife, and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.”
Chris Lewis
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
Yes, we are…..
We’re reading all emails and comments and we thank everyone for their support. We hope you turn it into passion for the cause and take a moment to figure out how you can make a difference. Go to a protest, donate a couple dollars to http://www.gettoknowmefirst.org
We care a lot about what everyone thinks.
Take care and happy holidays.
Chris & Cody (husbands)
lzr
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
Looks like she’s had some work done. Leviticus 19:28 forbids tattoos and body modification.
Timothy Kincaid
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
Patrick,
Thank you for the Deuteronomy quote. Because that happens so infrequently, I had not remembered that it is specifically listed as an abomination.
How very perfect that one “abomination” is so very self-righteously condemning another.
Regan DuCasse
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
Christopher and Cody,
They don’t have furniture, and their place is small.
But they have love, and they have each other.
Millions of young couples had days like that. And the comforts of each other could get them through life’s bumps and drags.
For the state, for those who are so miserly to look at this young couple and deny their love isn’t strong, real and affirming to their lives…have not enough love in them at all.
Not even for God, who gave us the remarkable ability to be curious and searching for education and the meaning of the other people we share the planet with.
And why those who deny these two young folks are so cowardly to not want to see this joy, this love and where it will take us all.
I wish Christopher and Cody, all that love can bring to make them strong, whole, more prosperous and healthy.
Love will do everything for us, to deny ANY human being their full capacity for it and for each other…is the epitomy of meaness and unnecessaryy cruelty.
What do I want for Xmas?
I really wish for more couples like Chris and Cody to show them all…
Patrick
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
You’re welcome Timothy.
I learned a while ago to not go around condemning people’s behavior because somewhere in those “forgotten” verses of the Bible, something I’m doing is condemned as well. If only they would learn the lesson as well.
I would love to hear how they excuse away their “marriage” (use of derogatory quotation marks is intentional) that the Bible so explicitly calls an abomination – I have no doubt they would find a way.
AJD
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
L. Junius Brutus wrote:
“Let’s also not disregard the culpability of the LA Times. I was disgusted by the way they tried to portray those two sympathetically. If this had been the 1960s, surely they would sympathetically portray the “Segregation Now, Segregation Forever” crowd.”
I tend to agree. I think one reason — one of many, of course — why homophobia retains such social and political acceptability is because the news media so often present the public with this type of false balance that they would never present if this were about racism, sexism or anti-Semitism. And I’m saying this as a journalist.
Still, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for the Ferreiras. They worked like dogs to strip loving couples like Christopher and Cody of the right to marry with enthusiastic disregard for the hardship they inflicted in the process, and they’ve vowed to continue working like dogs after Prop 8 has passed. Their concerns are completely frivolous, and on top of that, they’re a rich-ass couple living in a gated community. When I read their profile, my first thought was that their case was as good an example as any of what Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil.”
Compare that to Christopher and Cody, who’ve endured all kinds of difficulties in their lives and now live like paupers in California, yet also worked like dogs just in the hope of winning equality for themselves, not denying it to others.
I live with my partner of close to two years, and I really identified with Christopher and Cody and admired them for their strength.
Reading about the Ferreiras, on the other hand, made me want to track down one of their email addresses and send them a 10-page, profanity-laced bitchfest of an email.
Patrick
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
I’m personally willing, perhaps out of my ignorance, to give the LA Times a bit of slack. Consider it this way, they chose a gay couple that has had to strive against a lot to live a decent and honorable life. They chose a straight couple that is nothing but an example of hypocrisy. Even though the Times wouldn’t say it out loud, the Times made a point of bringing up the sordid past, the luxurious lifestyle, and the inanity of the heterosexual couple’s lifestyle. I’m guessing the Times could have easily found a respectable straight couple without the hypocritical past to profile and they could have found a gay couple that hasn’t had to fight the injustice of life as much. The Times may not have been explicit, and may purposely tried to appear impartial, but their choice in couples leads me to suspect they wanted the reader to feel sympathetic for the gays.
L. Junius Brutus
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
“Reading about the Ferreiras, on the other hand, made me want to track down one of their email addresses and send them a 10-page, profanity-laced bitchfest of an email.”
LOL! I like your spirit.
AJD
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
LJB,
I almost did, but in the end I figured it would be a waste of keystrokes.
Alex H
December 22nd, 2008 | LINK
I like the way the Ferreiras and others prayed for 12 hours for Prop 8 to pass. After they fasted for 40 days (technically 4 hours a day, since the article said that they fasted 12 hours a day and you factor in 8 hours of sleep per night etc., Oh and giving up “Days Of Our Lives.” I’m sure that convinced God)!
Forget about poverty, hunger, disease, and war…just make sure two people of the same-gender can’t marry in California. Is that too much to ask for? *sarcasm*
And the Ferreiras, according to the article, divorced each other before. I thought that was a big no-no for evangelical people? I forgot, they fasted and prayed, so they’re excused…
Tom in Lazybrook
December 23rd, 2008 | LINK
Apparently, Abel Ferreira was fired from his job with a North San Diego County mobile home sales distributor. How do they make their money?
Tom in Lazybrook
December 23rd, 2008 | LINK
FYI, if anyone at Box Turtle Bulletin would like to speak with a former coworker of Abel’s at the mobile home company, please let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
Mark F.
December 23rd, 2008 | LINK
Those boys are so cute. Best of luck to them.
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