The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, June 19
Another Exodus Conference Is Upon Us. Let's Review.
For Our Opponents: Talking to Your Kids About Same-Sex Marriage
The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, June 18
The Daily Agenda for Monday, June 17
The Daily Agenda for Sunday, June 16
The Daily Agenda for Saturday, June 15
The Daily Agenda for Friday, June 14
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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Linda Harvey of Mission America is one of those anti-gay activists that live at the extreme end of bias and animus. There are few things which Harvey would find too vile or outrageous to say. Nor would she ever let basic decency stay her hand or common sense slow down her all-encompasing need to spew bile and venom on gay people.
SharonB
August 3rd, 2009 | LINK
I guess to Ms Harvey, the only crime that the shooter committed was in having a little too much zeal for the cause, which is not really too much of a crime to her, probably.
Burr
August 3rd, 2009 | LINK
So let me get this straight (pun intended)..
It’s okay to blame gays for 9/11 and Katrina.
It’s not okay to blame homophobes for homophobic violence directly affecting gays.
Ooooookaaaayyy..
Penguinsaur
August 3rd, 2009 | LINK
I bet James Dobson threw a party when he heard about the shootings. Anyone actually surprised at these bigots cheering on violence has never done any research on them.
Candace
August 3rd, 2009 | LINK
They think they make Baby Jesus happy with their hatred and prejudice against gay people. It’s their way of getting brownie points so maybe god won’t fly a plane into a building while they’re in it.
It must be terrible to live in such fear.
homer
August 3rd, 2009 | LINK
Every time I hear something about this Harvey “person” I am disgusted. You wonder what happened to her to fill her with such wickedness.
TomChicago
August 3rd, 2009 | LINK
Although she may be using a seemingly mild-mannered phrase like “traditional moral viewpoint” to avoid the more heartfelt foaming at the mouth we usually hear, we still must point out that there is nothing particularly virtuous about the merely traditional view. Slavery and the debasement of women have for centuries been justified on the grounds that they are traditional views.
Brieuse
August 3rd, 2009 | LINK
If it comes about that it was a hate crime. Then I’ll hold her and people like her personally responsible.
If it were a hate crime then she’s effectively saying that she’s saddened by the murders but that she believes that people should be allowed to defend their beliefs with automatic weapons.
----
August 4th, 2009 | LINK
I would rather be killed immediately by bullets than having my spirit and integrity die a slow death due to “ex-gay” doctrine.
William
August 4th, 2009 | LINK
“Those who have same sex attractions should see them as a sinful disorder, yet one that can be overcome. … Our greatest hope for all youth is that they live long and healthy lives. These kids’ chance to do that has been stolen from them.” – Linda Harvey
It is kids who are told things like this whose teenage years are being stolen from them, as I realise that mine were. At a time when their straight peers are learning to come to terms with their natural sexuality and, hopefully, to express it responsibly, gay teenagers are being morally bullied to repress theirs and to engage in a futile and harmful attempt to get rid of it.
As life slowly slips away, I find myself ever less tolerant of pernicious statements like Linda Harvey’s.
Christopher Waldrop
August 4th, 2009 | LINK
While it’s accurate that Harvey doesn’t say “they deserved what they got”, she does make a pretty sickening accusation when she says, “this incident is already being used by the homosexual community to blame this act on those holding a traditional moral viewpoint.” In posts here and elsewhere there’s been a great deal of sympathy expressed for the victims, but also qualifications that the gunman’s motivations aren’t known at this point. While this attack seems to have targeted openly gay and lesbian people, it’s been stated here that we can’t conclude that. The attack occurred at an LGBT center, so it’s logical that many of those who are closest to the victims are either LGBT people or friends and family members of LGBT people. So why then does Harvey have a problem with the expressions of sympathy and outrage? Why does she have a problem with people who, understandably, make assumptions about the gunman’s motive even if his identity isn’t even known yet?
What I think sickens me most about her statement is that she’s making a preemptive strike, saying that the gunman’s motive doesn’t matter. She might as well come right out and say “they deserved what they got” because that’s what she’s implying.
AdrianT
August 4th, 2009 | LINK
Her article is obscene. Linda Harvey cynically used the massacre of innocent people – one of whom was a young, straight teenager – as a cheap attempt to sell the ex-gay message, and get some column inches. Cheap, tawdry, spiteful – it’s beneath contempt. Why not write your press releases in their blood and have done with it, Mrs Harvey?
And no Linda Harvey, being gay is NOT a choice. The whole of the scientific community thinks your opinions on the matter to be nonsense. Instead of wallowing in self pity and whining about persecution – as she is doing on her latest blog, on her ludicrous website, it’s high time she realized that she must expect ridicule for her beliefs, since she is not qualified to comment.
cmh
August 4th, 2009 | LINK
Linda “It’s not the bullet but the gay that kills” Harvey. claaasy lady.
Regan DuCasse
August 4th, 2009 | LINK
She’s behaving as if we can’t read, can’t interpret her inference or implication.
Her words are VERY clear to us. Her message is clear, and it’s ongoing and going and going…
What makes her think we were wrong, or misunderstood HER!?
What makes her think that we don’t know what she really means or is determined to say?
These young people were meeting in peace and fellowship. They were friends, they were doing no harm, nor plotting to.
They represented love and support, not clandestine activity they shouldn’t have been engaged in.
We know EXACTLY what she’s saying.
She just doesn’t like how ugly it is when WE hold up the mirror.
William
August 4th, 2009 | LINK
I’ve just been on Mission America’s website. Mission America appears to be a “Christian” fundamentalist organization whose overriding obsessions are homosexuality and New Age beliefs and practices.
If Linda Harvey were consistent she ought to praise and applaud such attacks on gay people. Fundamentalists insist that the prohibitions of homosexual behaviour in the Mosaic Law are binding on modern Christians. (They justify such ad hoc selection from the Mosaic Law by inventing a fraudulent distinction between “moral”, “ceremonial” and “national” laws, ignoring the clear and repeated reminders throughout the Book of Leviticus that ALL the laws are commands of God and that ALL are to be observed.) And Leviticus 20:13 could not be clearer:
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”
Fundamentalists insist that the story of Sodom in Genesis is historical and that Sodom was destroyed, not for violent inhospitality or for attempted homosexual mass rape, but for homosexual practices per se. So surely anyone who murders gays is to be commended for following God’s example. As Queen Mary of England said in justification of the burning of Protestants, “As the souls of heretics are hereafter to be eternally burning in hell, there can be nothing more proper than for me to imitate the divine vengeance by burning them on earth.”
Furthermore, fundamentalists also insist that Romans 1:26-32 is about homosexual behaviour tout court and that we are still constrained today by St Paul’s very limited understanding of homosexuality. So what does St Paul say?
“Who knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”
Why doesn’t Linda Harvey just come out with it honestly and say, “Look, IF that gunman was deliberately targeting gays then he did a damn good job. The only thing that he can perhaps be criticized for is acting ultra vires; but he wouldn’t have had to do that if the Israelis had followed the word of God and instituted the death penalty for homosexual behaviour”? Because I suspect that she knows perfectly well – although she probably hasn’t reasoned it out in such explicit terms – that if she did, a huge proportion even of those who invoke the authority of an “infallible” Bible in their condemnation of gays would be startled into re-thinking their attitudes.
David C.
August 4th, 2009 | LINK
Call it P.C. hate mongering, and outrage in the absence of it would not be confined to the class of individuals who consider the Bible the inerrant word of God. A mainstream awareness of the true nature of anti-gay activism would ultimately be the undoing of Linda Harvey, Mission America, and the whole of the RRW attack on civil rights.
That awareness cannot come too soon.
Bill S
August 4th, 2009 | LINK
Hmm. So Queen Mary was a sociopath.
The jury is still out on Harvey, because she’s hiding her nastiness just enough to almost appear sane. She’s always on the verge of letting her true awfulness spill out.
I hope when it does, it’s on a widely watched, nationally televised program for EVERYONE to see.
ravenbiker
August 12th, 2009 | LINK
Bull-oney!
Linda Harvey has and does endorse this vile act! I linked up to her “denouncement” and found as she writes:
“…it is deplorable this incident is already being used by the homosexual community to blame this act on those holding a traditional moral viewpoint. Israelis, just as anyone else on earth, should still have the right to oppose homosexuality for religious or other reasons without being called accessories to murder.”
Allow me ask an obvious question: besides anti-gay propaganda that brings out hate filled people to the polls of Prop 8, how else would one interpret having the “right to oppose” homosexuality?
The answer is violence. Far as I’m concered, Ms. Harvey didn’t condemn anything—just the LBGT community, once again. And yes, she IS an accessory to murder!
Jack
August 28th, 2009 | LINK
I don’t understand how we could have read the same statements. You are reading things into the story that Mrs. Harvey clearly did not say. But rarely does anyone deal with her objectivly and fairly.
I don’t know why I expected, that would happen here.
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