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For Our Opponents: Talking to Your Kids About Same-Sex Marriage
The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, June 18
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The Daily Agenda for Sunday, June 16
The Daily Agenda for Saturday, June 15
The Daily Agenda for Friday, June 14
South Africa Teen’s Death Shows It’s Time to Ban Ex-gay Therapy Everywhere
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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Elise
January 10th, 2010 | LINK
American Vision quote continued: “Now, it just so happens that God revealed that the homosexual act is a civil crime, and it just so happens that He revealed that the homosexual act as a civil crime deserves the death penalty. Warren disagrees. He argues, “Since God created all, and Jesus suffered and died for all, then we are to treat all with respect.” Of course, Jesus never claimed to suffer and die for all; He claimed to give his life as a ransom for many (Matt. 20:28; 26:28; Heb. 2:10; 9:28). Likewise, God did not create all for unqualified “respect,” but some to be vessels of dishonor and destruction (Rom. 9:21–23).”
Wow. That’s a truly frightening understanding of one’s fellow human beings. And in the comments section of the Throckmorton blog Jeff Sharlet notes that American Vision is actually a pretty influential purveyor of historical revisionism to both Christian schools and politicians. Scarier still.
Ryn
January 10th, 2010 | LINK
Ah yes, American Vision, the website of one Gary DeMar, one of those people who nobody’s ever heard of but who is an instrumental member of the Christian Reconstructionist/Theonomist movement, which is trying to implement Old Testament Civil Law as American law. They’re not at all apologetic about the fact that they want to implement the death penalty for homosexuality, adultery, and even for rebellious youth.
I don’t think Sharlet even knows or understands the full reach of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, and he’s not correct in representing them as part of the anti-intellectualism of American evangelicalism. They’re generally very highly educated, probably some of the most educated people in conservative evangelicalism. One of the reasons that they’ve been as successful as they have is because they’ve taken advantage of the fact that the average evangelical isn’t terribly intellectual and overwhelm them with big words and complex arguments. People tend to be afraid to question their arguments for fear of appearing stupid, and that’s when they even see that there’s a problem–the Reconstructionsts frame their arguments using terms that are familiar in American evangelicalism, but they use them in ways that are just different enough that, if you’re an evangelical, unless you know what to look for you may not even catch what they’re doing. It’s pretty obvious what they’re doing if you’re outside of evangelicalism looking in, or if you’re an evangelical and know what to look for, but since most people don’t have a clue about any of it, Reconstructionist thought is slowly spreading in evangelical churches and has been for the last 30 years.
If you want to get really scared though, start looking into the name R.J. Rushdooney and who all he and his associates are connected to. He’s the father of Christian Reconstructionism, almost nobody’s heard of him, but once you start digging you realize that his fingerprints are over almost everything in the American religious and political right in the last 30 some odd years.
Lynn David
January 11th, 2010 | LINK
Don Schmierer and Howard Ahmanson Jr have both been signatories to some of the WCF letters or ‘declarations’. The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org). Seems there was a connection between the Watchmen on the Wall and the WCF in Riga, Latvia, along with “American activist Scott Lively, president of Defend The Family International.” Both Schmierer and Lively signed the WCF letter on Defense of Marriage in Romania early in 2008. The WCF especially thanked Scott Lively of Watchmen on the Walls (among others) for circulating the petition concerning the defense of marriage in Romania in their April 2008 newsletter. See:
http://www.worldcongress.org/WCF/wcf.nl/wcf.nl.0804.0204.pdf
Bottom of page 2.
So why doesn’t WCF show the love for Lively as well?
Gene Touchet
January 11th, 2010 | LINK
To address the “civil” crime, check out Kosnik’s “Human Sexuality,” 1977.
It was written by a team of Catholic theologians and posits that the Leviticus proscriptions were based in cultic politics rather than “divine” revelation. There is evidence that at the time of Leviticus certain religious prostitution was practiced in neighboring tribes In order to keep the Israelite practices from being “corrupted,” anything which the neighbors included in religious practices was prohibited to them.
(Kosnik was silenced by the Church and the book banned.)
Ryn
January 11th, 2010 | LINK
Oh yes, Howard Ahmanson Jr., yet another example of how all roads lead back to the granddaddy of Christian Reconstructionism, R.J. Rushdooney. He says he’s not on board with the whole stone-the-gays part of Rushdooney’s teaching, but that didn’t stop him from giving millions to the foundation Rushdooney started even though that’s one of their stated goals in implementing OT civil law.
Burr
January 11th, 2010 | LINK
Well at least these guys actually DO take it literally instead of reaaaaalllyy stretching it into only a condemnation of same sex marriage. Never understood how “kill gays” gets translated by a believer of the supposed “literal, inerrant” bible into “don’t let them exchange wedding rings.”
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