News, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric
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Jim Burroway
February 6th, 2010
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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.
Richard Rush
February 6th, 2010 | LINK
I’m going to reveal a well kept secret: FAGS is the acronym for the psychological disorder named Fanatical Anti Gay Syndrome. And we all know that God hates FAGS. So God is really on our side, and that’s why He made us so cute.
Edwin
February 6th, 2010 | LINK
Way to go Richard! I knew there was a reason why we were all CUTE.
Jesus Loves Me and We Are All His Favorites cause we are all So Cute….
Ben in Oakland
February 6th, 2010 | LINK
jesus likes me more than he likes you, and I’m not even a Christian.
Jeff
February 6th, 2010 | LINK
Love it!!
I always wondered why people were so drawn to me…I am cute!!
Lynn David
February 7th, 2010 | LINK
I know I’ve had my cheeks tweeked several times.
Oh… wait… nevermind!
AdrianT
February 7th, 2010 | LINK
Mmmn It’s the starting point of the realization that the Road To Damascus is actually a two way street.
Once you start asking a question like that, you can also ask, well, why does the whale have a pelvis? why are human eyes wired backwards? why is the solar system on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy?
Perhaps the best question to be asked about the Deity, is What were you doing all that time? as Christopher Hitchens explained on his debating tour:
“Human beings have been on this planet for at least 100,000 years. Some say up to 250,000 in their current form. But 100,000 is all I need. And for an all seeing, caring God to be true, you have to imagine this:
That for tens of thousands of years, it was a battle to survive, life expectancy 20-25 years, and if they managed to survive childhood, they would be dying of disease, fighting for shelter, food, warmth, women… terrified of earthquakes, floods, predators, nearly driven to extinction in the Ice Age.. and for all this time, Heaven watches with folded arms. Then, after about 97,000 years, decides to intervene and reveal itself, not to the Greeks, to the Indus civilizations or the Chinese, who can think and do philosophy and science; but to illiterate peasants in the only place in the Middle East with no oil, and from where the message would take so long to spread, two thirds of the world has, to this day not yet accepted it. A Virgin Birth is more likely”
:-)
Richard Rush
February 7th, 2010 | LINK
On a more serious note, this sign is kind of the verbal equivalent of popping someone’s water balloon at the moment it is over their head during the motion of throwing it. Or causing a pie to go into the thrower’s own face. It diffuses the intended effect and makes them look incompetent.
And the sign helps us to seem more likeable, I think. That kind of gentle approach is something that does not come naturally to me when responding to those I see as nasty bigots.
The thing I’m trying to remember is how our messages are perceived by people in the moveable middle – even when we are responding directly to the hardcore bigots. Those hardcore bigots are probably a lost cause anyway, at least until they become socially ostracized the way racists have been – and even then their changes in attitude may be phony.
Quo
February 7th, 2010 | LINK
If I were running a pro-gay website, I don’t think I’d want to publicise signs that make gay people look stupid and childishly self-indulgent.
(The idea of AIDS being God’s judgment on fags may make little sense, but it makes better sense than that stupid sign, being held up interestingly by someone whose face isn’t visible).
Jimmy
February 7th, 2010 | LINK
Quo:
Do you listen to the things you say? You may be of a different belief about homosexuality than most on this site, but vitriol is a very poor way to show what you imagine to be the love of Christ.
Using AIDS as a polemical weapon against another human being never makes sense at all. It’s just cruel. Even if it were true that only gay people get sexually transmitted diseases, the human response would not be to celebrate how right it makes you feel.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to tell you this, but I bet the reason why you think gay people are stupid and self-indulgent is because you never get to indulge in your own true self. I can promise you, Quo, that as someone who used to live between fear of religious condemnation and the fear of never being able to change, that when you leave this abusive relationship you have with the faux church, everything will be different. It will never be easy for you (it wasn’t/isn’t for any of us) but it will be finally real. And maybe then you can let go of the dehumanizing anger that is cutting you off from the kind of love and honesty that frees you from the dark prison you have chosen to be locked up in.
Do it before you miss every one of the years of whatever youth you have left.
Priya Lynn
February 7th, 2010 | LINK
It was a joke Quo, that this has gone over your head just makes you look stupid and childish.
John
February 7th, 2010 | LINK
Quo expresses concern that this joking post “make gay people look stupid and childishly self-indulgent” with the presumed negative effect of undermining argements and appeals for equal treatment and equal rights for gay people.
Oddly, he doesn’t seem to think that his non-joking, vigorous, sustained, very disturbing advocacy that parents should be able to have their children sexually abused without interference from police and child protection agencies wouldn’t undermine his ability to continue trying to make anti-gay arguements.
Joking post that mocks anti-gay hate mongers as well as gay stereotypes vs. hardcore advocacy of child sexual abuse. No contest.
Richard Rush
February 8th, 2010 | LINK
Oh Quo, the fact that you’re in a snit about the sign is a symptom of a virulent form of FAGS (Fanatical Anti Gay Syndrome). People trapped in the bondage of FAGS are often overcome with a compulsion to lash out.
aratina cage
February 8th, 2010 | LINK
Hilarious! It is facetious enough to take the wind out of their sails and it calls into question the indefensible underpinnings of their hate signs/website.
rufinka
February 8th, 2010 | LINK
though i do not personally support homosexuality, i would agree that many gay people have pretty great style.
Timothy (TRiG)
February 8th, 2010 | LINK
AdrianT: Bravo!
You get this sort of thing all the time on God Hates Protesters. I love that site.
TRiG.
Quo
February 9th, 2010 | LINK
Did I say the sign wasn’t a joke?
No.
Clearly it’s a joke, and as noted, it’s a pretty pathetic one, especially since the self-identified “fag” holding up that sign is covering his face with it.
Priya Lynn
February 9th, 2010 | LINK
You say you see its a joke now, but your previous response says you didn’t realize it then. Lighten up Francis, its just a joke.
Quo
February 9th, 2010 | LINK
Apparently some people not only can’t see that some gay jokes are stupid, but are incapable of even imagining that other people might think they’re stupid. I wonder what the cause of such defensive solipsism is?
Priya Lynn
February 9th, 2010 | LINK
Stupidity is in the eye of the beerholder. Go sleep it off Quo.
Richard Rush
February 9th, 2010 | LINK
Quo said, “. . . the self-identified “fag” holding up that sign is covering his face with it.”
If a person is in a crowd holding up a sign (without the benefit of a stick), chances are they are using two hands to hold it high enough to be seen. In this case someone happened to snap a picture. For you to leap to the notion that he “is covering his face with it” is an example of the derangement commonly seen in people with FAGS.
Priya Lynn
February 9th, 2010 | LINK
That Quo is getting all bent out of shape over a lighthearted and rather humourous sign is also evidence of Fanatical Anti Gay Syndrome.
Timothy Kincaid
February 9th, 2010 | LINK
Hey Richard,
while your acronym is amusing, I’d prefer not to use it much at this site. Filtering software looks for words like that and I’d prefer that our site be as widely available as possible.
Thanks
Christopher™
February 9th, 2010 | LINK
I don’t know about you, Quo, but I think I’m pretty cute. And so is my boyfriend. :-)
Aaron
February 10th, 2010 | LINK
“Apparently some people not only can’t see that some gay jokes are stupid. . .”
Well, I thought it was funny. :/
I wish you would stop judging us just for liking a funny sign.
Peace, love and joy be upon you.
Richard Rush
February 10th, 2010 | LINK
Oh Timothy, you’re inhibiting my pursuit of happiness.
But I understand. :-)
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