The Daily Agenda for Monday, May 20
Gay Man Shot To Death In NYC Hate Crime
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
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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Lindoro Almaviva
June 24th, 2010 | LINK
Why marry her when he could’ve married a hot puertorican Catholic?
Regan DuCasse
June 24th, 2010 | LINK
There are lots of things that break up even straight couples.
Two of them are thinking one can change the other, and unrealistic and unmet expectations.
So no, Ms. Danielle’s eyes aren’t wide open. She’s going along with two of the most tragic myths of marriage and paths to divorce… EVER.
Richard Rush
June 24th, 2010 | LINK
Rational people would understand that homos enticing (or more likely duping) straight people to marry them is not beneficial to society. The continued marginalization of gays promotes exactly that. Only religious loons could possibly believe these marriages are preferable to gay people pairing off with each other.
I don’t think the general public has been educated in how common these marriages have been, and how the maintaining of inequality continues to promote them. I have been stunned at the number of examples I personally know or know of where the marriages ended. And then there are the ones I know where one spouse is secretly out regularly looking for some homo-sex on the side. I imagine that the general public is really oblivious.
This is one area where full equality, including same-sex marriage benefits straights as well as gays. But I’ve never heard a word about this in the voter referendum campaigns.
One question I always want to ask a religious loon is, “Would you prefer that I marry my boyfriend or your daughter?”
Lynn David
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Seems I read somewhere that Mansfield may be bisexual and had been associated with the Mankind Project and attended its New Warrior Training (http://www.mkp.org).
Good luck to them both, they are going to need it. Truth in reality often doesn’t mean as much for some religions as putting up a good front.
Priya Lynn
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Timothy said “Some men do find this sort of arrangement to be adequate”.
You haven’t set the bar very high when your goal for a marriage partner is that they be “adequate”.
Ben in Oakland
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Of course, lacking in this discussion is the point of view of danielle. I know this may be a sacrilege to some, but I suspect there are lots of women who would be happy in a marriage like this just so that their menfolk don’t bother them.
Ben in Oakland
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
And richard, as I have often said…
let us marry each other so that we don’t marry YOU.
Jason D
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Ben, Richard, unfortunately a lot of those folks are under some foolish beliefs surrounding this:
-gay marrying straight might cure the gay!
-gay marrying straight will be a beneficial example for the kiddies!
So if they had a daughter(or son) unable to find a mate on their own, they’d be perfectly willing to settle for a well-behaved closeted homosexual. Grandkids don’t make themselves, after all!
The caveat, of course, being that you would have to at least appear to be a repentant ex-gay.
Kevin
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
I’ve known Ty for several years, although when I left Mormonism and moved in with my partner he quit talking to me. We’re still Facebook friends, so I checked and yes I can verify that they did get married.
In chatting with other friends that are still on speaking terms with him, I don’t get the impression that Danielle truly understands what she has just gotten herself into. She thinks she has. She nods her head when asked. But she hasn’t really considered everything.
For her sake, I hope the marriage works out splendidly and she gets everything that she has ever hoped for. Somehow I doubt that will happen.
Emily K
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Something missing here is an understanding of just how important it is in Mormonism to be married. You can’t reach the highest post-life celestial level unless you’re bonded to another soul. marriage is HUGELY important and it surprises me not at all that a gay man – or bisexual, or at least openly attracted to other men – would marry despite internal feelings to the contrary. Although, if he IS bisexual, that wouldn’t be as big a problem as if he were 100% gay.
Aaron
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Emily’s right, he almost certainly did this for theological reasons.
Jason D
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Emily brings up a good point. Marriage is a big thing, they practically raise mormons to go out and find their mate ASAP. And also, that if this man is indeed honestly bisexual, then this isn’t really much of an issue.
All of the bisexuals I’ve met are either in opposite-sex relationships or married to the opposite sex. The numbers game just tends to work in that direction.
cowboy (on vacation)
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Emily is right. What else is missing is an understanding of how much peer pressure and acceptance in Mormon culture is a factor.
My family used several examples of gays getting married as a possible option for me and others of my ilk. In every case, the “marrieds”: 1. Get divorced. 2. Live a hellish life with torments and guilt when they have eventual trysts. All the while the children are the causalites.
Though, I personally know gay Mormon fathers who live the hetero-way because the ramifications of leaving the world of conformity is too great.
Ty might be a future candidate for Mr. Congengiality at some Gamofite rally/function. He is that cute. (Gams are a group of gay Mormon fathers.)
Life is an education.
Priya Lynn
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Jason said “All of the bisexuals I’ve met are either in opposite-sex relationships or married to the opposite sex. The numbers game just tends to work in that direction.”.
I’ve been married to a person of each gender.
Richard Rush
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Jason wrote, “All of the bisexuals I’ve met are either in opposite-sex relationships or married to the opposite sex. The numbers game just tends to work in that direction.”
While I certainly believe that true bisexuals exist, my anecdotal observations tell me that there are not nearly as many as would check the bi-box on a poll. For many people I think it’s a transitional identity on the journey from a hetero to a homo identity. The bi identity is a first step toward acceptance of reality, as it is more palatable than homo.
It seems to me that when so-called bi married guys go looking for sex on the side, they are looking for guys. One guy I know got divorced after many years of marriage with several children. He still claims he’s bi-sexual, but jumped into the man-on-man scene with both feet, and shows no interest in women whatsoever.
Jason D
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Richard I was guilty of the “Bi Now, Gay Later” phase. I’m still embarassed by that. I was all militantly bisexual and everything.
I wouldn’t know for sure if any/all of my bi friends are “truly” bisexual. As I’ve learned, there’s a lot of different types.
Only time will tell if your friend’s “men only” situation will change or not.
Priya Lynn
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Well, I’m 49 and I am still attracted to both sexes, so its definitely not a transitional phase.
Richard Rush
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
Cowboy wrote, “My family used several examples of gays getting married as a possible option for me and others of my ilk. In every case, the “marrieds”: 1. Get divorced. 2. Live a hellish life with torments and guilt when they have eventual trysts. All the while the children are the causalites.”
So, while the Mormons (and many other churches) force a one-size-fits-all idyllic marriage fantasy on everyone, the objective reality is often what Cowboy described. It’s an all-too-typical example of how religions reject objective reality and choose fantasy as the preferred option. But really, in their minds objective reality is irrelevant. Pretending and going through the motions of conforming to their fantasy is all that’s required. For example, if their doctrine says “we are called to love the homosexual,” then they claim to “love the homosexual,” but it’s just a performance. Things become reality by magic. It’s Magic Reality and Magic Truth.
Emily K
June 25th, 2010 | LINK
there’s no need to be “embarrassed” by a “bi phase.” People go through all kinds of phases all the time. I was bisexual in high school because i was still confused and growing. Even somewhat in college i was still bisexual, for the same reasons. now i guess i’m all gay, but i prefer ‘queer’ because hell, i’m a complicated person. but i see myself with a woman permanently.
Jason D
June 26th, 2010 | LINK
Emily my embarrassment was more in the self-righteous fire in which I declared and maintained my bisexuality despite obvious evidence to the contrary. ;)
Richard Rush
June 26th, 2010 | LINK
Jason D,
BTW, I enjoyed your “Bi Now, Gay Later” phrase.
Timothy Kincaid
June 26th, 2010 | LINK
I once asked a young “bi” friend, if you are so bisexual then why did you just notice that guy but not the hot girl he was with?
Donny D.
August 24th, 2011 | LINK
Priya Lynn wrote:
Add a few years and that’s my situation as well.
The reason so many L & G people think there are so few B people is probably because most of us choose to blend in with one monosexual identity or another just to avoid trouble.
Maybe that needs to change.
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