The Daily Agenda for Sunday, May 19
French President Hollande Signs Marriage Bill
The Daily Agenda for Saturday, May 18
Fox News Ignores Marriage Equality Wins
The Era of Civil Unions Is Coming To An End
Orthodox Priests Lead Violent Attack On LGBT Rights Rally in Tbilisi, Georgia
France's Marriage Equality Bill Clears Final Hurdle
The Daily Agenda for Friday, May 17
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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Kelly
June 22nd, 2010 | LINK
Would you gay men please stop making the lifestyle choice of using both sides of your brain while recognizing faces? That’s so girly! ;)
Angwyn
June 22nd, 2010 | LINK
Be careful!
Just because a study seems to show a biological origin for homosexuality, doesn’t mean its good science or worthy of being widely shared.
I have little reason to doubt that my homosexuality is biological, innate and something I was born with.
This study would seem to agree, but, and this has been argued many times before, in a way which finds similarities between gay men and straight women.
Believing that those like me are gay men because our brains are wrongly developed to make us have female traits is insulting to us AND to women, whose brains it says, share our ‘abnormality’. Researchers, both men and women who come up with these findings are displaying their own prejudices, not revealing scientific facts.
Good science trying to unearth the biological origin of homosexuality shows that we, gay women and men are normal. Different, yes. In a minority, yes! But not deviant errors of opposite gender heterosexuals.
Pacal
June 22nd, 2010 | LINK
So dull. The usual inversion hypohesis boredom. That in the usual couple of years will have been found to be overdrawn. But as per usual the media will lap it up. Its all so wearily familar. Once again the usual dull as dishwater nostrums that Gay men are really in some sense women and of course Lesbians are in some sense really men. It is beautifully dull and goes perfectly with a binary version of male and female as opposite poles.
Its of course also a fact that studies that find such differernces get vastly more play than those that don’t.
Emily K
June 22nd, 2010 | LINK
I couldn’t agree more with Pacal’s sentiments:
Also, call me when people actually start studying gay W O M E N. Once again, people are obsessed with the almighty phallus. gimme a break.
Joe in California
June 23rd, 2010 | LINK
Well said Emily K & Pacal.
Touché!
Jason D
June 23rd, 2010 | LINK
Angwyn, Pacal, I think you’re both layering in some of your own biases on this thing.
I don’t think finding similarities between gay men and women somehow feeds into a binary gender structure. In fact, I think it defies it. If you choose to see it as binary, then yes, you can make the conclusion gay men = women. But if you choose to see the world as more nuanced, and human sexuality and gender being more fluid — this actually supports that notion. Gay men may share some similarities with women, but they ALSO share a lot more with straight men. That can’t, and shouldn’t be ignored or dismissed.
Priya Lynn
June 23rd, 2010 | LINK
I’m with Jason. Whenever I’ve heard about biological similarities between gay men and straight women or lesbians and straight men it never occured to me that someone might think the researchers were trying to say gay men were really women inside and lesbians were really men. This just says gay men and straight women or lesbians and gay men share some similarites, it in no way says they are the same. By the same token we can find many biological similarities between men and women, that certainly doesn’t say they are the same.
Aeval
June 23rd, 2010 | LINK
“Good science trying to unearth the biological origin of homosexuality shows that we, gay women and men are normal.”
I couldn’t give less for what good science trying to unearth regarding human sexuality, and I definitely don’t need any science studies, good or bad, to tell me that I’m normal, what worries me is how that science is used by those who interpret the results to fit their preconceived beliefs.
Priya Lynn
June 23rd, 2010 | LINK
One other thing: Gay men are sexually atracted to men just like straight women and lesbians are sexually attracted to women just like straight men. If those who are upset at the conclusions of this research don’t see that as stating that gay men are really women and lesbians are really men why would they feel that way about this and similar research?
MIhangel apYrs
June 24th, 2010 | LINK
I worry about all these studies since they may result in certain people looking for “the cure”, or a test for gayness that could allow an excuse for abortion.
My right to life and respect isn’t predicated on me being “natural” (whatever that is) or “born that way”, it is embedded in my rights as a human being, inaliable in a civilised society. I should not have to apologise or fight any more than I do for having red rather than blond hair, or left-handedness rather than the predominant right-handedness.
Jason D
June 24th, 2010 | LINK
MIhangel that’s a concern of mine too. I always caution people about trying to find the gay gene.
As soon as we find the cause, someone will try to find the cure.
Finding a genetic cause isn’t the magic trump card people are hoping for. It’s, in fact, giving the enemy more ammo.
Sure, a small sect of society, upon finding out that being gay is genetically or biologically determined MIGHT change their minds, but those who oppose us most fervently will simply see this as proof that it’s a disease (diabetes and other illnesses are genetic, after all) and start working on a cure.
IF being gay were a choice, so what? Religious Affiliation is absolutely a choice and we aren’t permitted to openly discriminate based on that. We protect choice in the US.
Embarcadero
June 24th, 2010 | LINK
I agree with the statement that this study adds to a growing pile.
Can we please stick to the political reporting? Every time BTB veers off-course and into the realm of science, it gets weird. And kind of embarrassing.
As a gay scientist, this is a pile I’d like to stay far away from.
Priya Lynn
June 24th, 2010 | LINK
“Can we please stick to the political reporting?”.
Let’s not and say we did. The BTB science reporting is extremely helpful and well done.
William
June 24th, 2010 | LINK
I can’t honestly see that it will make any difference to the anti-gay brigade. Irrespective of the actual or putative cause(s) of sexual orientation, they will still want to “cure” any orientation that is not heterosexual. My advice to anyone who is offered such a “cure” – no matter on what theory it is based – would be the same: just say no.
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