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
Queens chose gay marriage
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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The Autry National Center of the American West is a cowboy museum. In fact, it was founded by one of the country’s best known Hollywood cowboys.
Richard W. Fitch
December 16th, 2009 | LINK
I have heard the legend that the song, “Frankie and Johnnie Were Sweethearts”, is actually about two men. Can anyone verify that? Even in recent decades, TV shows, such as Gunsmoke, held an underlying premise that the likes of Miss Kittie were gender renegades. And to think that the movie “Brokeback Mountain” helped to seed this set of events at the Autry!!
Elise
December 16th, 2009 | LINK
This looks amazing.
This sort of history just fascinates me. Kudos to the museum for going there!
Lynn David
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
I remember from back in the 80s, one of those old cowboy stars, on one of those shows similar to ‘Death Valley Days’ or some such show, talking about William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, as…. well, it wasn’t very good terms, I remember something about being a back-shooter, maybe whining, little…. and ending with queer. That sorta thing sticks with you. I remember thinking to myself, how did he know that? Then deciding he was just calling ‘the kid’ whatever he could to denigrate him. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t refering to this William Bonney.
Jafuf
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
Transgender folks in the ‘wild’ west. C’mon, let’s be serious folks. I seriously doubt anyone went ‘under the knife’ to change their sex in the mid to late 19th century. Transvetites, yes, of course. Unless the word ‘transgender’ is now being used to classify anyone who even cross dresses. Sorry, but I’m not up on my gay vocabulary.
Lymis
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
Jafuf,
Of course there wasn’t gender reassignment surgery. The idea isn’t about the reassignment, it is about the experience of finding yourself in a body that doesn’t match your personal experience of gender.
Dressing and acting as the other gender – sometimes to the point of actually spending your life passing if you could get away with it, is hardly new, and with the rigid social and gender roles back East, it is hardly a surprise to find that people who chose (for whatever reason) not to fit in headed West.
For that matter, it has long been documented that some Native American cultures accepted members of their tribe who chose to live as the other gender.
Jaft
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
Jafuf – You’re thinking strictly of Transsexual. Transgendered means anyone who crosses traditional gender boundries (though often, when used, means specific groups). So, yes, cross dressers (straight men who dress as women) and transvestites qualify under Transgendered.
Jafuf
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
Well, I said I wasn’t up on the latest ‘gayspeak’. Words change meaning so often these days, I wonder how anyone can keep up. In my day, we were all ‘queer’, but that seems to have lost all gay connotations these days.
Jaft
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
Not really. Queer is still used to encompass all the non-heteronormative, including the more specific groups. So, we’re still all Queer.
Jason D
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
Jafuf, transgender is not exactly new, it was popularized in the 1970’s and become something of an umbrella term in the 1980’s.
Bruce Garrett
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
If you ever get your hands on William Dale Jennings’ book, The Cowboys, give a scan to the absolutely fascinating “Western Glossery” he attached to the end of it. Jennings, himself a pioneer in the modern gay rights movement, clearly did a lot of research and picked up on things that perhaps heterosexual historians of the period were either blind to, or just didn’t want to notice. Here’s one entry, just to give you a taste:
Beyond the notice of terms that could clearly be taken as homoerotic double-entendre when you looked at them more carefully, there are a lot of delightful western slang terms such as “Coffin Varnish” for whiskey and “Live on the jawbone” for living on credit and “Ankle Express” for when circumstances force you to walk rather then ride. You’re told that “Eating grass” is one of 31 terms the cowboy had for being thrown from a horse. The book is vastly better then the John Wayne movie made from it, mostly for all these little details of cowboy life.
Ephilei
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
Transgender people (even people going under the knife) have been around for thousands of years. Eunuchs. Hijras. It makes sense for transfolk to have manifested in the Wild West where there was lots of alone time and not worrying about what culture thought, not to mention no cross dressing laws. Transpeople will thrive where cultural taboos are weak.
cowboy
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
From the referenced LA Times article:
That’s making an assumption all Christians are anti-gay and all gays are anti-Christian doesn’t it?
mikeksf
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
Cowboy..
Yup, Pardner, it sure ‘nough does
John Trudell
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
Jim’s comment in the article uses the words “sometimes” and “some”, not “always” and “all”.
So no, there isn’t an assumption that all Christians are anti-gay and all gays are anti-Christian .
Timothy Kincaid
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
Not necessarily. As a gay Christian, I would probably feel uncomfortable in a rodeo group’s Bible study. This is a pretty conservative community (cursin’, carousin’, drinkin’ and cheatin’ notwithstanding) and I think that if social issues arose in such a setting that I would either have to bite my tongue or get confrontational.
People who are otherwise friendly and polite can find themselves feeling perfectly justified in saying the most offensive things if they they are in a religious setting.
cowboy
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
My experience with gay/straight rodeos can be rather stereotypical. Sometimes you have to defend doing barrel racing (which is strictly a female event at “normal” rodeos) but I was proud to know our one-time champion bull rider (and local sheriff/forest ranger) was a petite woman. There aren’t many in the main-stream rodeo circuit who know we have steer-wrestling for both genders. If I get any flack from anyone I just introduce them to Debbie.
[Tip hat] mikekSF
Oh…okay John T. maybe it was a bit implied.
John Trudell
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
If it was implied, it wasn’t implied by Jim.
A lot of what was said during the interview didn’t make it into the final copy.
We have many Christians on the Ultimate Brokeback Forum where Jim is a member.
It’s a topic we’ve been discussing for 4 years.
alanschultz
December 17th, 2009 | LINK
Unknown to most, the real cow “BOYS” were Black men fleeing slavery in the south and going west. Blacks were often called “BOYS” thus the word cowboy. A more historical museum would be to visit the Black Cowboy Museum in Denver, Colorado. (Not sure if that is the correct name) fascinating place and probably depicts the real cowboys better.
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