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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Bruce Garrett
September 23rd, 2009 | LINK
Yes…I envy them. But this is exactly what we were, and are, working for. That world where that wonderful magical time when you discover what it is to be in love isn’t a nightmare anymore for gay kids. I wish I had it to live, but I am so very glad I lived to see its dawning, finally. This world will be a much better place with more happy memories of being young and in love for the first time in it.
Gina9223
September 23rd, 2009 | LINK
I’m so glad that a teenager has the freedom to grow up in a country that allows himself to be himself…. to think, he’s going to a gay dance and is worried about clean clothes… it’s so different to my own youth.
I’m glad for him and all the other teens out there that are getting to go to dances and be normal teenagers. I know that there are those out there who still are not allowed to be themselves and I hope we can make it a better place for all of them.
rusty
September 23rd, 2009 | LINK
I have had many a conversation about the second adolescence that many glbt folk have to go through as a result of ‘the closet’. I cry when I meet young people who get to date peers, their first crush, their happy times.
Bill Herrmann
September 23rd, 2009 | LINK
Rusty, I couldn’t agree with you more. I had my second adolescence in my mid-30s and wished that I could have had both of them simultaneously.
I want these kids get to just take it for granted that that’s the way the world is. I don’t want them eternally grateful for the struggle that got them to this point. I want them to enjoy their lives and live them as normally as possible.
Andrew
September 23rd, 2009 | LINK
It’s amazing to me, being from Oklahoma, the difference. I’m only a decade older than that kid, but things have changed a lot. Even in OK.
Stefano A
September 23rd, 2009 | LINK
This New York Times magazine piece was truly one of the best msm pieces on gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth that I’ve read in the last few years.
The one and only fault I had was Benoit’s brief quote from the director of the Christian Educators Association International, Finn Laursen. That brief quote, in my opinion, gave a rather distorted impression of the CEAI as being “supportive” of GSA’s for example. However, a search of the CEAI web site for the word “homosexuality” brings up only six resource links, all of which are links associated with Exodus International specifically or organizations whose primary purpose is “liberating people from homosexuality”.
The main membership center of CEAI, btw, is in Ohio. I don’t really know much about them or Laursen, but it would be interesting to know what role they’ve played in getting passed (or not passed as the reality is) anti-bully legislation in Ohio.
Polaris
September 23rd, 2009 | LINK
Wow, these kids are amazing, I didnt have the courage to come out to myself till I was 27. This truly is the best news I heard all day.
Waldo
September 23rd, 2009 | LINK
I knew I was in 1968. There was nothing to read, no one to tell, and certainly no 14 year old jocks to date.
Lynn David
September 24th, 2009 | LINK
I was 14 in 1968 also…. and I told my best friend. I still remember the homophobic tirade I got from him, because it forced me back into that closet. Having lived in Oklahoma during that time of my second adolescence, I too am surprised at how far things have come. It is what we have voted, fought, marched, aggitated for these many years. I often think homophobia will be with us forever, but items such as this herald that glimmer of hope moreso than any vote against DADT or the DOMA or for gay marriage or ENDA.
paul j stein
September 24th, 2009 | LINK
I had a priest trying to explain to me that liking guys was wrong especially at 13yo (1973). When I transferred to public High School the next year (1974) it was the dean of students (he had 10 kids and cheating on his wife with female students)doing the exact same thing . I beat a guys ass thoroughly for calling me a “faggot” and throwing my books at me (first day of High School). That was the “DAY OF DECISION”, my “Stonewall Moment”. Every GLBT person faces it, take it forever or make a stand! I took my 5 day suspension. My coaches saw that I had the balls to stand up and were supportive to the point of stepping in if the harassment would get too far past “normal” adolescent harassment. After awhile the harassment stopped and bigger guys , I was 6’2″(really bigger football guys)would step in and kick some ass for me. People will step up if given the support from peers and people in places of authority.
Emily K
September 24th, 2009 | LINK
I came out when I was 15, in 2000. :¬) That was almost 10 years ago. Glory!
I have to say it didn’t make things any easier in terms of admitting who I was in love with, or being able to date. I’m just a shy person by nature. Just like a straight adolescent (and now 20-something), I have trouble with that. “Coming out” isn’t a magic bullet to happiness, but it helps to be honest about who you love.
Chris McCoy
September 24th, 2009 | LINK
Wow. I am so happy that something I could only dream of 15 years ago is a reality for gay youth now.
I pause to celebrate, and remind myself that it’s the little victories that count.
I look forward to the day when these same youths grow up and marry their high school sweet hearts and no one bats an eye. When they adopt a child, and no one thinks twice.
RebLaw
September 24th, 2009 | LINK
You know, it’s times like these when I feel like an odd duck. I’m pretty young (27 years as of April), yet I find myself identifying more with the older posters than the younger ones. I was raised in a very conservative Catholic house, that’s probably why. While I remember knowing that I wanted to marry another girl at a young age, but I wasn’t able to come to terms with it until I was in my 20s. I didn’t come out to my parents until I was in my mid-20s. And, my parents didn’t understand, and still don’t.
grantdale
September 24th, 2009 | LINK
Don’t be silly Timothy — if you had come out at 13 you would now be internationally famous, stunningly attractive and also embarrassingly rich.
(Instead, you’ve had to settle for just the one of those.)
Fortuitously, I didn’t come out at 13 either. And I’m not sure what I would have come out of at that age and in that era, come to think of it.
But I’m glad things are changing. All else aside, I think most sensible parents would rather their son or daughter be open and supported and monitored during these first stumbling steps with a peer than leave them to discover for themselves what it means to be under the caring tutelage of a dirty old Larry Craig in a restroom.
Not that this happened to me. But my stance on this is anything but a “wide stance”. 13 year old gay boys should have 13 year old boyfriends, if any. Full stop. Well, OK, maybe 14.
Cute. And exactly what we’ve been fighting for. One of the things.
Dan
September 24th, 2009 | LINK
From what I’ve noticed, kids at that age even if given the opportunity still prefer to not label themselves as gay. Sexuality is much more complex than simply coming out.
I did not come out until I was 18 years old, but I’ve had sexual relations with a couple of boys my age since we were 12.
You guys have nothing to feel bad about. Being a teenager still sucks!
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