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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"
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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Kristie
April 23rd, 2009 | LINK
Whether “marriage” was ordained by God or not isn’t the point and that is something opponents of marriage equality don’t seem to get. They have the right to their religious beliefs but they don’t have the right to foist those beliefs on every other citizen of this country.
If their particular church doesn’t want to affirm same-sex marriages they have that right,(just as they have the right now not to marry a couple that doesn’t belong to their congregation or to their demonimation) but they don’t have the right to contend that the state should base it’s civil laws on their particular church’s choices. There are many churches (Unitarian Universalist, United Church of Christ and Metropolitan Community Church to name a few) that do affirm and support same-sex marriage. Why shouldn’t the state have to base it’s laws on their belief systems? Why don’t those on the religious right care about the religious freedom of these churches?
The point is that religious bias has no place in civil law and that is what this issue is about. It doesn’t matter what anyone’s Bible says, what matters is that constitutionally we are all supposed to be treated equally under the law and everyone (regardless of sexual orientation) should have the right to marry the person they love.
homer
April 23rd, 2009 | LINK
Then there are Mary and Joseph- talk about a real traditional family. Mary wasn’t even formally married to Joesph when she got pregnant, was she?
Richard W. Fitch
April 23rd, 2009 | LINK
Tim – They were ALL in traditional marriages – for their time and cultural. As has been stated many times here and elsewhere, what anti-gay marriage advocates in the USA hold up as ‘traditional marriage’ has taken its present form only since the early part of the 20th century, after women gained the right to vote and after they stepped in to fill the workplace void during the wars. This present situation underlines again the need to separate the sacrament of marriage from the legal and civil rights sought by all couples, regardless of gender, in established long-term relationships. Let the religious bodies have marriage and allow civil government to provide validity and security, with all the rights and responsibilities of a contract, to consenting adults. [and as an aside to Homer - There are some reputable NT scholars that hold Mary may have been carrying the son of a Roman soldier. Various passages in the Gospel of Mark are pointed out as consistent with the idea - especially one referring to Jesus as 'the son of Mary', a highly inconsistent reference in a highly patriarchal society.]
JJQR
April 23rd, 2009 | LINK
Kristie : A lot of people don’t seem to get all that. And that’s from someone who generally has a lot of respect for religious institutions. No church would (or should) be forced to accept same-sex marriage if they choose, but that has nothing to do with U.S. citizens being, legally, able to choose a significant other of the same sex.
Kristie
April 24th, 2009 | LINK
JJQR,
I wholeheartedly agree with you. I guess what I should have said in that last paragraph was that religion (full stop) rather than religious bias has no place in civil law. Didn’t make myself totally clear there.
toujoursdan
April 24th, 2009 | LINK
You got to love all the revisionist history.
This is the history of Christianity and marriage:
First-century Christians did not value the family and saw celibacy and freedom from family ties as a preferable state.
Augustine believed that marriage was a sacrament because it was a symbol used by Paul to express Christ’s love of the Church. Despite this for the Fathers of the Church with their hatred of sex, marriage could not be a true and valuable Christian vocation. Jerome wrote: “It is not disparaging wedlock to prefer virginity. No one can make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil” (Letter 22). Tertullian argued that marriage “consists essentially in fornication” (An Exhortation to Chastity”) Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage said that the first commandment given to men was to increase and multiply, but now that the earth was full there was no need to continue this process of multiplication. Augustine was clear that if everybody stopped marrying and having children that would be an admirable thing; it would mean that the Kingdom of God would return all the sooner and the world would come to an end.
This negative view of marriage was reflected in the lack of interest shown by the Church authorities. No special ceremonial was devised to celebrate Christian marriage – despite the fact that the Church quickly produced liturgies to celebrate the Eucharist, Baptism and Confirmation. It was not important for a couple to have their nuptials blessed by a priest. People could marry by mutual agreement in the presence of witnesses. This system, known as Spousals, persisted after the Reformation. At first, the old Roman pagan rite was used by Christians, although modified superficially. The first detailed account of a Christian wedding in the West dates from the 9th century and was identical to the old nuptial service of Ancient Rome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_of_marriage#Early_church_fathers
Most Christians were in common law marriages until the 16th Century or so. It wasn’t required that Christians be married in the presence of a priest until the Council of Trent. In England, that wasn’t a requirement until the Marriage Act of 1753.
The modern, western version of marriage was created by the State, managed by the State and can be altered by the State. If the Church, or any other religious body, wants to Sacramentalize it and choose who its wants to marry, that is fine too. But to pretend, as some on the religious right do, that marriage was some central ceremony of the Church which all devout Christians partook of, which the State later took over and is trying to change, is simply revisionist history.
GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE » “They don’t have the right to foist those beliefs”
April 24th, 2009 | LINK
[...] found a comment at BoxTurtleBulletin I wanted to comment on. “Kristie” said, in part: Whether “marriage” was ordained by [...]
David Benkof
April 24th, 2009 | LINK
Kristie-
I found your words above interesting and worthy of comment and I have blogged about them at:
http://www.gaysdefendmarriage.com/2009/04/24/they-dont-have-the-right-to-foist-those-beliefs/
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