News, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric
|
|
The Daily Agenda for Thursday, May 23
It's Not the Principle, It's the Prejudice
Gay Couples Excluded from Immigration Bill Markup
How To Spot A Swivel-Eyed Loon
The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, May 22
House of Commons officially passes marriage equality
British Commons Approves Marriage Equality Bill
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Rudolf Brazda, 97, is probably the last surviving “Pink Triangle”, gay men who were rounded up by the Nazis and detained in concentration camps for being gay. They were made to wear pink triangles as an indication of their reason for imprisonment. Brazda spent three years from 1942 through 1945 at Buchenwald. Some estimates push the number of gay men who died in the camps at somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000.
© Box Turtle Bulletin. All Rights Reserved.
Posts 
Posts via daily email:
jOHN
October 15th, 2010 | LINK
So where is the interview?
Priya Lynn
October 15th, 2010 | LINK
How could he be 97, there are no gay senior citizens, all gay men die at 42, right?
Martin
October 15th, 2010 | LINK
Priya, perhaps, but remember that some of us have serial 41st birthdays. ;)
Tone
October 15th, 2010 | LINK
It is a privilege to listen to him speak, to have our history documented for us, for now and for future generations, that we may never forget what systematic dehumanization can lead to.
In the end how much difference is there between the people who declared Rudolf Brazda’s life of little value, and those on the political and religious right who seek to do the same thing?
Timothy Kincaid
October 15th, 2010 | LINK
Hey, if Jack Benny could be 39 for four decades, why can’t I?
mikeksf
October 15th, 2010 | LINK
Thank you BTB for posting this video. I felt it was perfect bookend to the previous one you put up from the Ft. Worth Councilman, Joel Burns. A span of 70 years and I was reminded again that it can get better and that freedom is a constant struggle.
jOHN
October 15th, 2010 | LINK
Oh…I think think the video is blocked by my company I will have to check it out when I get home.
On of my favorite plays is BENT and I first read this in college and got to see it about 20 years ago here in San Francisco and was made into a movie and is worth checking out. The subject matter is very strong and the friend that I went with me to see the play left at intermission because he could not deal with the emotions that were brought out in the play.
Regan DuCasse
October 15th, 2010 | LINK
The Simon Weisenthal Center maintained some rare videotaped interviews of gays and lesbians who survived that time. Most of the testimonies, from about 500 or so people, are written ones. Recorded from different European countries.
When we screened several, such as documentaries about gay related Holocaust issue over a period of a week for Pride month, interestingly, there were surviving family members. Such as parents,siblings, nieces and nephews, and children of gay victims or survivors of the Holocaust who also were interviewed.
I forget who curated that exhibition of films, but it was an amazing week.
Parisian, and Berlin based gays recalled the intellectual and artistic atmosphere that lent a live and let live situation. Nurturing for gays and lesbians in ways very different than what we see in our more Puritan based values right now.
The Holocaust was a shock because of how that intellectual aspect, gave over to a more brutal one, and gay people, like Jews, had no one willing to defend them.
Just as our staunch opposition keeps asserting, gay people were suddenly ‘defectives’. Dangerous defectives.
Which is why this attitude they have gives me chills and makes me so sick and angry.
You’d think that the people in the FRC and so on, had NEVER seen the very Holocaust documentation out there or knew nothing of how the Nazis went about their business and influenced the neighbors, university peers and professors and so on, against them.
Which is so inexcusable in our country that such ignorance or willfulness against this knowledge goes on.
As long as someone is around to tell it, we’ll know.
You can understand why I consider the ADF’s counter demonstration, “Day Of Truth” is as offensive as teaching Holocaust denial and demonstration of it, on Shoah.
Cory Sampson
October 15th, 2010 | LINK
But of course, as we all know, Mr. Brazda was just another part of the Nazi Homosexual agendaaAAARGH
How can Scott Lively sleep at night?
Terry
October 16th, 2010 | LINK
Bravo Rudolf. I am inspired by your resilience and strength. Carry on.
Leave A Comment