Box Turtle Bulletin

Box Turtle BulletinNews, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric
“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
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Latest Posts

The Daily Agenda for Friday, May 24

Boy Scouts of America Votes To Allow Gay Members, Retains Ban On Gay Leaders

Nevada House votes to reverse marriage ban

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, May 23

It's Not the Principle, It's the Prejudice

Congratulations Mitch!

Gay Couples Excluded from Immigration Bill Markup

How To Spot A Swivel-Eyed Loon

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

Daniel FettyThe 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.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger closing arguments

Timothy Kincaid

June 16th, 2010

Today is the last day of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the legal challenge to Proposition 8. By the end of the day, the case will be in the hands of Judge Vaughn Walker. Karen Ocamb has a guide to of the final day’s expected events.

The legal team of Ted Olson and David Boies have crafted a compelling argument for why this proposition should be found to be in violation of the US Constitution. And much of it was supported by the defense’s own witnesses.

There is no question that Prop 8 harms gay individuals and families. There is no question as to whether it discriminates against gay people. The only questions are whether it was motivated by malice and whether there are state interests sufficient to justify the discrimination.

And in answering Judge Walker’s questions, Olson and Boies were eloquent.

The extensive evidence that Prop. 8 was in fact motivated by moral disapproval of gay men and lesbians underscores its unconstitutionality. Indeed, where, as here, a law is subject to heightened judicial scrutiny, the “justification[s] must be genuine, not hypothesized or invented post hoc in response to litigation.” United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 533 (1996). Accordingly, the messages presented to voters during the Prop. 8 campaign and the voters’ motivations for supporting Prop. 8 are relevant to whether Prop. 8 was enacted to further a sufficiently important interest to survive constitutional scrutiny. Proponents’ laundry list of purported state interests, invented after Prop. 8 was enacted and for the purposes of this litigation, cannot be considered under heightened scrutiny if Prop. 8 was not in fact enacted to further those interests. See id.; Doc # 605 at 12-15. And, if Prop. 8 was motivated simply by moral disapproval of gay men and lesbians, then it cannot survive any standard of constitutional scrutiny. See Romer, 517 U.S. at 634.

In other words, all the crap they came up with during the case is irrelevant. It’s not the pseudo-scientific sounding justification for Prop 8 that was presented in court that tells us the intent of the voters; it’s the campaign commercials. The intent and motivation of the proposition is reflected in the vile, nasty, campaign of hate and bigotry that waged on the airways in 2008.

We will have to wait and see when the Judge will announce his determination. But we have reasons to be hopeful that this very careful judge will weigh the evidence and come to the only possible conclusion: that marriage discrimination against gay people serves no legitimate state interest, is based in animus, and is contrary to the protections enacted in the Constitution of the United States.

Comments

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I. R. Trollen
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

You gay activists are keen to use the courts instead of ballots to prove your point. I would like you to keep my mind: “Judicial decisions must be tempered by popular votes, otherwise the rule of law becomes a panel of wolves deciding which sheep to have for dinner.”
You are making the same mistake as atheists campaigning for secular government, reinforcing minority rights that may be used one day against you. At least you do not expect to become the majority, as atheists do; when they do, they will want to ban praying in churches and replace Bibles with Das Kapital, but will find the same constitutional guarantees they have secured in court used against them.
I only ask you to remember an old cautionary tale:
“When Communists were the majority, I spoke up for minority rights, because I was not a Communist.
“When Jews were the majority, I spoke up for minority rights, because I was not a Jew.
“When Catholics were the majority, I spoke up for minority rights, because I was not a Catholic.
“Now I am the majority, I am not allowed to do anything with it and it all feels so pointless.”

penguinsaur
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

I don’t know which was stupider, the ‘gay activists’ line or the crap about atheists. Amazing how the attacks against both groups are similar.

Atheists don’t want the government blatantly favoring Christianity or any other religion so the people who want to keep the government blatantly favoring Christians lie through their teeth and claim atheists want to “ban prayer” and “Silence Christians”.

Gays don’t want the government blatantly favoring straights or any other orientation so the people who want to keep the government blatantly favoring straights lie through their teeth and claim gays want to “force churches to marry them” and “Arrest people for criticizing homosexuality.”

Thankfully in both cases them being forced to use lies can only mean that they can’t find anything real to back up their cause.

FY
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

@ IR TRollen (Cute pseudonym)

“I only ask you to remember an old cautionary tale:
‘When Communists were the majority… etc”

You just made that up, right?

Perhaps you meant:

“”THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came…

Aaron
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

@ IR Trollen:

I think that you need some athiest friends, because you clearly don’t understand what many of them are fighting for.

Also, I’m disgusted that you have the audacity to (even incorrectly) quote Niemoeller who suffered in a Nazi concentration camp for the civil rights of his religious sect to practice their religion. He was a freedom fighter.

We don’t want to take away your freedoms, we want to have our freedoms declared. We want our freedom to marry protected. That’s all. We don’t want to take away your ability to marry AT ALL. We just want OUR right to marry.

As a Christian who is gay, I find your stated opinion both ignorant and anti-christian.

Aaron
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

Further, I see no reason why the majority should have the right to remove my rights. Would you have advocated that the majority have the right to decide whether or not to give African-Americans full equality back in the early 20th century?

Timothy Kincaid
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

That is a fascinating cautionary tale. To look at it closely, it says:

I spoke for minority rights when I was a minority, but now that I’m a majority I want to be as oppressive as they were if only I were allowed to.

Yep, that’s cautionary all right. It cautions me to be wary of you and your motives.

DN
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

Glenn Buck much, Mr. Troll? Hope you bought your copy of his universally-panned thriller!

Priya Lynn
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

I can’t believe Mr. Troll used the idiotic line that gays shouldn’t seek equality because if they get it that right will be used against them. You’re never going to find a gay person stupid enough to believe that one Mr. Troll. If you believe that line how about you campaign to deny heterosexuals the right to marry because that right might be used against you?

Jason D
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

Uh, guys, the name “IR TROLLen” should’ve been a non-starter. It reads as a bad attempt at satire.

Donnchadh
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

People, you’re feeding a troll, a not even a good one at that.

Priya Lynn
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

Tell us something we don’t know Donnchadh.

Chris McCoy
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

Obvious troll is obvious.

Timothy Kincaid
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

IR Trollen,

You got me. I fell for the troll bit without catching the satire. Clever.

I really should have recognized the bastardization of Bovard’s quote:

“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”

And I even have the advantage of being able to look to see your real identity.

;)

My bad.

Lindoro Almaviva
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

You gay activists are keen to use the courts instead of ballots to prove your point. I…so pointless.”

That is the biggest bunch of propaganda brain washing I have seen since Maggie and Debbie Thurman populated these pages.

Does this guy have an original thought in that sh1t-filled brain? I mean, is he capable?

Candace
June 16th, 2010 | LINK

Don’t feed the trollen……..

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