Last Minute Bid to Sink Marriage Bill Fails in British Commons
Will Illinois Be #13?
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
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.
Gregory
December 1st, 2010 | LINK
I have found that there are so few role models for me, a queer young adult, because so many have been taken by this epidemic.
Regan DuCasse
December 1st, 2010 | LINK
I remember…there was a time, the issue was somewhat abstract for me. I was a young adult in the 80′s. I thought it strange that no one close to me was infected. I didn’t know anyone personally who was, nor had anyone died who was.
It was strange. I had gay friends. It was impossible not to. My entire professional life was in song and dance. Musical theater and political activism.
But that didn’t stop me from getting educated, and fast. Volunteering for APLA.
The seriousness and gravity of it all, I knew. Once at APLA, that’s when I started meeting infected people who’d become ad hoc activists themselves. I told them outright, how could I have not been able to see anything first hand before being in the trenches with them?
One time, I met a beautiful young man who was a friend of a colleague at the art museum I worked in. He just happened to sit and chat with me for about ten minutes while he waited to see her for lunch.
He was SO handsome, like a movie star. Charming and bright eyed. He was 23.
Two months later, my colleague came to work with red eyes, crying and exhausted. She told me he’d died. Of AIDS related pneumonia.
That was like a punch in the face to hear that. I held her hand, held HER, gave her as much comforting words as possible. But I was sad, SAD…for weeks after that. It was so cruel and wrong!
Since then, ten years ago I heard that a talented singer from the show choir we’d been in as teens had died of the disease. His brother told me.
And it had been two years prior that it happened.
Then two years ago, I heard another boy from our same show choir had died of AIDS about 16 years ago.
He had been 32 years old.
I was saddened all over again by this news. These were guys I’d lost track of in our young adulthood, and all this happened while I didn’t know them.
I know people with HIV. But not AIDS, right now. Lifestyle changes (like not smoking, drinking, or using illegal drugs and safer sex), and drug therapies are keeping them alive. They are in their 40′s and 50′s and 70′s.
They are at normal spans, but at ages at risk more for heart attack and cancer, rather than AIDS.
Black women were mislead by their churches and social networks into thinking that AIDS was a ‘gay disease’. And sometimes fell victim to their own illogical conclusions and denial.
All too easily were they told that the infection rates in their ranks was because of deceitful gay men, rather than the deceitful straight men who didn’t disclose their relationships with other concurrent partners, how many and who refused to use protection.
And a lot of black women bought into that to their own peril.
Black folks sometimes love a conspiracy theory, but are hard pressed to be accountable for something they had the power to prevent in the first place.
Being one of the high risk demographics as a black woman, and a participant in the Black Woman’s Health Study for over twelve years, I AM keeping up with the pulse and progress on this issue.
It concerns us so much. Africa was the foundation of this terrible plague and many in leadership of several African nations are complicit in keeping their people in the very denial, misinformation, myth and poverty that exacerbate it.
I tend to jump into a fight, whether it affects me or not. That’s why it didn’t matter if I actually knew and loved someone who had HIV/AIDS, what mattered was helping to fight it because it’s terrible, CAN be fought and should be.
It’s a GOOD fight. THAT is the point.
Peter, Leon, Rick…you touched me… You are remembered…
Gus
December 1st, 2010 | LINK
Sometimes I hear a song and it triggers a memory. I wonder were so-and-so is now. Oh, damn…
anteros
December 1st, 2010 | LINK
may a cure be found… and may the virus be eradicated… in our lifetime.
Pintuck
December 4th, 2010 | LINK
House of Numbers.
Timothy Kincaid
December 5th, 2010 | LINK
NY Times:
In short, “House of Numbers” is exactly the sort of bogusness and evil lies packaged as science that this site is dedicated to exposing and refuting.
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