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
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When the Episcopal Church ordained Gene Robinson as a Bishop, it threw several conservative congregations into a tizzy. Some were so upset about the idea of their church including an openly gay man in so high a position, that they announced that they would take their marbles and go elsewhere.
cany
January 5th, 2009 | LINK
There’s a lot more to this story that what the MSM has reported.
The tear began in 1979 when the Book of Common Prayer was revised and women were welcomed into the episcopacy as priests and bishops (gah–can you imagine… lowly WOMEN in those positions!)
The straw was Gene Robinson.
The real twister in this, right now, from my point of view (as a Piskie myself) is that those in leadership positions and holding the properties have all been either found by the church of abandonment of their communion, or are amist in the process as they have found extreme (for the most part, including AB Akinola and Bishops Orombi and Venables) anti-gay (in all cases, and I underline extreme) who are also anti-women in the episcopacy.
So what we have, right now, is an entire bunch of people aligned to foreign leaders with no churches and leaders which, as of today, cannot rightfully even administer communion on the shores of the US.
The whole situation is bizarre.
But one thing for sure: The MSM never got the history and details even close to right.
Timothy Kincaid
January 5th, 2009 | LINK
Cany,
I agree that the MSM has trouble getting the story right. I too have trouble getting the story right.
Richard W. Fitch
January 5th, 2009 | LINK
I’m a ‘Piskie’ too, so I know much of the story. But please clarify for me the ‘MSM’. I presume some news outlet(?).
lurker
January 5th, 2009 | LINK
MSM: “main-stream media” LOL :)
Richard W. Fitch
January 6th, 2009 | LINK
—duh—! Shoulda known. It was late. Figured it might be a specific CA paper. Bishop Robinson was not so much the last straw as a convenient excuse. Most Americans have accepted the need to update the language of their liturgy to be understandable to the average person (BCP-1979); and most have recognized that women can and should have primary roles in the structure of the church (other than SS teachers and crew in the kitchen for potluck suppers). However, the assessment of human sexuality, especially for clergy, has not gotten beyond the archaic notions that have been overshadowed by most contemporary science. Until the general populace can get beyond the concept of copulation as the only function of an intimate, primary relationship, especially as this applies to the LGBT community, the assertion that there can be a Godly gay-partnered man or women is enigma and blasphemy to them. There were and are many EC-USA parishes and dioceses that see the changes in the denomination as a threat to the security of their ‘old time religion’. Change is usually not easy for any religious institution. So the election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of NH simply provided them with the cultural ammunition to catapult from the ‘apostate, secularized revisionists’. Ironically, some of these groups have found new troublesome issues in the ideology of the third-world provinces with which they are now affiliated.
Gary
January 6th, 2009 | LINK
Nigeria’s Peter Akinola is a very ambitious man. Keeping the property of the breakaway churches out of the rebels’ hands might dampen anyone’s enthusiasm for deepening the split in the Anglican communion. It’s one thing for these non-U.S. bishops if there’s a pot of money to be gained; it’s quite something else if someone like Akinola would like to be Archbishop of Canterbury one day.
Kate Maver
January 6th, 2009 | LINK
The only thing LGBT people have to do is walk out the door of the church. Once you walk out the door of the church, hardly anybody cares if you’re LGBT. No more angst. No more hand-wringing. No more pointless arguments with religious pinheads. Try it. It’s really freeing.
Timothy Kincaid
January 6th, 2009 | LINK
Why on earth would LGBT people want to walk out the door of the Episcopal Church when that church is risking schism and conflict just so that they can proclaim that LGBT people are an equal part of the family of God? That doesn’t sound very freeing to me; it sounds ridiculous.
Richard W. Fitch
January 6th, 2009 | LINK
Thank goodness, the likelihood of Akinola being Archbishop of Canterbury is a moot point. Unless the Church of England is disestablished, the reigning monarch appoints the ++Bishop. It is more likely that Akinola will become the head or high high ranking official in the breakaway provinces. I have no respect for the man — NONE!! He and his ilk have shunned our Presiding Bishop at the world conferences over the past 4 years, partly because of her being a woman and partly because she is American. Akinola supports the efforts of Nigeria to make homosexuality a capital crime and even to prosecute/persecute those who associate with others suspected of being part of the LGBT community.
Jonathan Justice
January 6th, 2009 | LINK
While it is good to see that Justice Chin and the rest of the California Supremes do grasp the contractual character of congregational engagement in a connectional denomination, there does remain the question of whether the property ownership resides with the denomination or the diocese. The argument is made that dioceses like San Juaquin will get to keep the assets of churches in their jurisdiction even as the larger church moves to provide assistance to congregations that wish to remain with the ECUSA.
As a Presbyterian, I find it more than a little ironic that religious rightists have put so much energy into trying to precipitate a program of judicial activism that would impose a Procrustean bed of totally congregationalist polity on just about all of the hilariously various American churches. I have to suppose that the consideration that we are talking about California here does spice this up a little, but it does take some serious denialism for a bunch of Episcopalians to stomp around pretending that they do not understand their polity as connectional with regards to property.
grantdale
January 6th, 2009 | LINK
It will be interesting to see how this decision plays when the Virginia cases ‘finally’ make it to the Supreme Court.
(VA has a statute that permits a secular judge — rather than church body — to decide when a church has “split”, and the assets are then broken away by formula. ECUSA, and other churches, have argued strongly that any such law unconstitutionally infringes on a religious organisations ability to govern its own internal affairs. The California decision has confirmed that the ECUSA has its own way of doing things, as is their right, and is in direct conflict with recent Virginia judgements.)
Personally, if somewhat flippantly, I can’t but help connect the phrases “transfer of assets to a Nigerian Archbishop” and “419 scam” in my own mind.
Blame all those “My Dear and Esteemed Friend!!!” emails we’ve been receiving…
Wilburn Fessenden
January 8th, 2009 | LINK
Kate, I walked out of ECUSA years ago, and yes, it was very freeing. It continues to be a freeing experience. I would that all gays boycott anti-gay congregations of every color. I am willing to bet when 95% or church musicians and at least 50% of the clergy are no longer involved, there would be some miraculous divine intervention saying it is perfectly OK to gay after all. Money talks. I say let churches who want to segregate and hate be by themselves. Good riddance.
Timothy (TRiG)
January 23rd, 2009 | LINK
Wilburn Fessenden: “I would that all gays boycott anti-gay congregations of every color.”
I disagree. Strongly.
If you believe what the church teaches, you should stay there. And, while you’re there, you should play by the rules. If that means no sex, then so be it.
If you don’t believe what the church teaches, then get out. Now. Not as a boycott or any other form of protest, but merely because you shouldn’t be pretending to believe something you don’t. It’s not honest and it’s not good for you.
If you’re questioning, then continue to do so. It’s good for you.
And if you half-believe what the church teaches, then find a church you agree with more, or perhaps try to reform from within. But boycotts are just silly in religious contexts.
TRiG.
Kate Maver
January 27th, 2009 | LINK
I’m not talking about a boycott. I’m talking about, for the sake of your own mental health, getting out. Staying in is just masochistic. But if putting up with abuse somehow makes you feel like you’re nailed up there on the cross with Jesus, by all means, go ahead and let them nail you.
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